Today we continue the countdown of the Top 10 sports stories of the 2016-2017 school year at Pella High School with number eight.

Both the Little Dutch and Lady Dutch tennis teams made it to the state tournament this spring.

On May 23rd, the Pella girls made their first ever appearance at team state, falling to Waterloo Columbus, 5-1 in the quarterfinals.

One week later, Brooke Jorgensen defeated teammate Lily Roozeboom for third place in the individual state tournament, while Bronwyn Metcalf and Cecily Johnson competed in doubles.

All four of those ladies will be back in green next spring, along with other key contributors, which has Coach Josh McCollam very excited.

“Bringing all of that talent and experience back for next year, we’ll have a lot of seniors next year in our top six. So they’ve been there and the know the long season. Once you get past the regular season, the postseason grind is a long two extra weeks of practice and you need to maintain that focus. I’ll be relying on those girls to help maintain that focus for the girls who haven’t been there.”

For the Pella boys, they played on May 30th in Des Moines in the semifinals for the first time since 1999. They were knocked off by Cedar Rapids Xavier 5-2, then came back to beat Kuemper Catholic of Carroll, 5-4 to finish in third place.

That victory over the Knights was the first official victory at the state tournament in school history.