Hokan Bengtson is entering his 18th year as Becker boys tennis head coach. The drive and passion to mold his athletes into quality athletes and good character is still firing in his belly.
“I love it. Every year is a new challenge,” he says. Since high school coaches can’t recruit - it is a great challenge to develop the players that are in the program.”
Bengtson’s coaching staff is pretty close to the same as in year’s past with the exception of the middle school team where coach Alyssa Stevens has taken the season off (maternity leave) and Gretchyn Quernemoen has filled her role for 2019. Bengtson has 40+ kids in grades seven through 12 and will keep a dozen athletes on the varsity roster.
“Our depth is really good,” Bengtson said. “We have had some great competition for spots already this year and we have only been practicing for a week. We have a good mix of young talent and veteran leadership.”
A couple of those veterans are his captains, seniors Jacob Lukkarila, Brady Gruenhagen, and Aidan Persons.
“They have done a great job in our B3 (Building Better Bulldogs) leadership group,” he said. “They’ve been learning how to be servant leaders and what that looks like within a team.”
Lukkarila, Gruenhagen and Persons have a combined record of 161-44 over the course of their careers.
“They know how to compete at a high level,” Bengtson said. “Their job will be to show the younger guys how to compete every day in practice. So far they are handling the added responsibility very well.”
Bengtson envisions this year’s schedule as being very challenging. The Bulldogs will play the top teams in Section 8AA (Brainerd, Tech, Alexandria, Sartell, Monticello) and are playing Tech for the first time in the regular season.
“We have seen them (Tech) many times in section play, but this is the first year we were able to get them on our schedule - so that will be fun. Paul Bates does a terrific job with his program, his kids are always well coached an compete well.”
The 2019 season will be the last time Becker will compete in the Granite Ridge Conference before moving to the Mississippi 8 Conference in 2020. Bengtson’s boys are focused and determined to try and capture the conference title in the last year.
“This being our last year in the GRC we’d love to win it, but Pine City and Foley will have very solid teams this year,” Bengtson said. “We will have to play well to compete with them.”
The section playoffs usually goes through St. Cloud Tech or Brainerd,” Bengtson says.
“Both of those programs are experienced and skilled this year. We have a realistic chance of making state, our key will be to get better every day and for our young guys to grow as the season moves forward.”
One of the biggest challenges each and every spring sports team faces every year is the truncated season due to weather. With that, Bengtson encourages his kids to play year ‘round (if able to) and to participate in summer leagues and programs.
