New Ulm takes home conference title against St. James

Staff photo by Ari Selvey
New Ulm No. 1 doubles player Joey Kotten works to return the ball during a Big South Conference tennis match against St. James Area Monday at New Ulm High School.

NEW ULM — New Ulm finalized its conference championship with a 5-2 win over St. James Area Monday in a Big South Conference boys tennis match.

New Ulm jumped up 3-0 after three quick wins by No. 2 singles player Charlie Weidman, No. 3 singles player Gideon Heins, and No. 4 singles player Ian Schotzko. Weidman swept his opponent Xander Brown, 6-0, 6-0, and Heins did the same to his opponent Jacob Espinoza. Schotzko dropped a game to Juan Cervantes, but won 6-0 in set 2.

New Ulm had to wait a while for their fourth win, but the No. 1 doubles team of Joey Kotten and Dan Brownfield managed to defeat Vince Brown and Caleb Fast 7-6, 6-2 to clinch the match.

The final three matches of the evening went down to tiebreakers, with No. 1 singles Maverick Johnson downing Adrei Rivera 6-4, 4-6, 10-8, while the No. 2 doubles team of Aaron Black and Ethan Neet lost 6-3, 7-6, 14-12 to Dylan Reid and Cohen Dannhoff and No. 3 doubles team Isaac Dittmer and Eli Dorschner fell 2-6, 6-4, 10-8 to Rylan Meyer and Noah Sauer.

“St. James is solid,” New Ulm head coach Peter Engeldinger said. “They switched up their lineup from the last time we saw them, which was probably a good idea because we beat them 6-1 then. So that was to their advantage to do that. Our singles kind of cleaned up and did amazing. Mav has seen this guy once again this year, once before this year and once last year and he wasn’t able to do it, but he did it this year, so that’s pretty cool, he got it when it counted.

“We got the three right off the bat, then we were kind of stressing a little bit for that fourth one, and we got it and it’s pretty sweet, pretty cool.”

With the win, New Ulm took home the conference championship and now looks forward to a quick turnaround, with a Section 2AA match against Prior Lake on Tuesday.

“We’re back to Prior Lake, we were there last Monday,” Engeldinger said. “I thought, Mondays can be tough. We had the bus ride, we lost 4-3. I thought some of our doubles could have done better. We got back and then the rest of the week we saw Redwood Valley on Thursday and Waseca, and we won 6-1 and 7-0. If we play like we did against Waseca on Friday I really like our chances there.”