, 
A pair of Luverne High School athletes qualified for state play when the final rounds of the Section 3A Individual Tennis Tournament wrapped up in Redwood Falls May 26.
Two LHS doubles teams and one singles player competed in the final rounds of the event.
When it was complete, senior Cory Stroeh and junior Erik Wohnoutka finished second in doubles competition and earned the right to compete at the state tournament.
They will compete at the Minnesota State Class A Doubles Tournament at the Reed-Sweat Family Tennis Center in Minneapolis. Doubles competition begins June 4 at 10 a.m.
Stroeh and Wohnoutka earned the right to compete in the section championship match when they topped Redwood Valley’s Tyler Hagen and Max Russell by 6-4 and 6-0 tallies in the semifinals.
The Luverne team played well in the finals against Montevideo’s Jared Saue and Taylor Landmark, but the Thunder Hawks came out on the winning end of 7-5, 7-6 (7-5 in the tiebreaker) sets.
Stroeh and Wohnoutka squared off against teammates in a true-second-place match later in the day.
Chris Jelken and Dalton Schoeneman dropped 6-3 and 6-2 decisions to Montevideo’s Landmark and Saue in the semifinals, but they bounced back to defeat RWV’s Russell and Hagen 7-6 (9-7 in the tiebreaker), 6-7 (3-7 in the tiebreaker), 6-4 to set up an all-LHS match for second place.
Wohnoutka and Stroeh handed Schoeneman and Jelken a pair of 6-1 setbacks to advance to the state tournament.
“Erik and Cory had a pretty good day. They dispatched a pesky RWV team in the semifinals in a match that was closer than the scores indicate. They stood toe-to-toe with the Montevideo team, slugging it out for each point. Montevideo just won a few more critical points,” said LHS coach Greg Antoine.
“Chris and Dalton couldn’t get anything going in their semifinal match against Montevideo, and the third-place match against RWV was neck and neck the whole way. By my count there were 36 games and two tiebreakers. That’s a lot of tennis. I think their tanks ran empty in the next match,” Antoine said.
Jacob Jarchow dropped a pair of singles matches and placed fourth individually.
He lost a pair of 6-0 sets to Worthington’s Andrew Johnson in the semifinals and came up on the short end of a pair of 6-4 tallies against Montevideo’s Riley Emery in the third-place match.
“Jacob played hard, but he couldn’t get anything going against Johnson. Against Emery, he couldn’t get the two games in a row he needed to turn the sets around. He did place fourth and that’s a good showing for his first individual tournament,” Antoine said.