The Crookston Pirate Boy’s Tennis team struggled in singles and dropped a pair of tight doubles matches falling 6-1 in a non-Section match against the Moorhead Spuds played at the Crookston High School Tennis Courts.
Moorhead won all four singles matches with little resistance, however, all three doubles matches were highly competitive. In the first doubles match, Nick Garmen and Tanner Janorschke battled Moorhead’s Ives Hilgers and Michael Overbo. With the first set tied at 6-6, the Spuds won the set tie-break 7-5 to win the opening set 7-6. Crookston’s top doubles team bounced back to win set two 6-3, but Moorhead came out on fire in the third set winning 10-2 in the tiebreaking final set. “It was good rallies,” said Crookston head coach Cody Brekken. “The scores kind of showed it this go around. It was tight at the end there, we couldn’t pull it off, but it was nice to see our guys finally lose the first set and still have the fight to win the second set, rather than vice-versa.” In the second doubles match, Jack Garmen and Tanner Janorshcke secured the Pirates lone win on the day. Garmen and Janorschke took the first set 7-5, before cruising to a 6-0 win in set two for the match victory. “It was good to see,” added Brekken. “We were kind of switching up our line-ups a little bit halfway through the season and trying to see what fits going into the heavy stretch here coming up. Jack Garmen and Robert Janorschke was a good pairing there at second doubles to see. Handily, they kind of won their match. That was a good one.” Dilon Owens and Chris Kazmierczak also played a very competitive match for Crookston in third doubles. Owens and Kazmierczak took the first set 6-2, but Moorhead’s Rhett Kramer and Oscar Bergeson bounced back to win the second set 7-5. In the tie-breaker third set, the two teams rallied back-and-forth, but the Spuds ultimately prevailed winning the final frame 11-9 to close out the 6-1 win for Moorhead. “It was competitive throughout,” summarized Brekken. “We kind of tried some different people at singles this match. We just kind of wanted to see where different players worked at different spots. Mason Owens played singles for the first time, so again we’re still kind of going through and seeing where people fit, overall it was good competition today, and they competed tough.”
Crookston falls to 0-6 and returns to the courts on Thursday to compete with Bemidji, Thief River Falls, and East Grand Forks in the Northwest Quadrangular being played in East Grand Forks beginning at 11:00 a.m.
| CROOKSTON-1 | Moorhead-6 | Win | Score | |
| 1st Sin | Blake Fee | Brycen Lunak | MOR | 6-2, 6-0 |
| 2nd | Mason LaPlante | Eric Cai | MOR | 6-0, 6-1 |
| 3rd | Logan Johnson | Hagar Khalid | MOR | 6-0, 6-0 |
| 4th | Mason Owens | Jeron Sheldon | MOR | 6-0, 6-1 |
| 1st Doubles | Nick Garmen Tanner Janorschke |
Ives Hilgers Michael Overbo |
MOR | 7-6(7-5), 3-6, 10-2 |
| 2nd | Jack Garmen Robert Janorschke |
Justin Dang Dan Arnold |
CROX | 7-5, 6-0 |
| 3rd | Dilon Owens Chris Kazmierczak |
Rhett Kramer Oscar Bergeson |
MOR | 2-6, 7-5, 11-9 |
