Lady Dutch take runner-up at state tennis

PELLA — Another fantastic tennis season came to a close for the Pella girls tennis team on Monday. The Lady Dutch, who came in as the defending Class 1A state champions but were replacing five seniors from that team, remarkably battled back to the finals where they would get a rematch against Xavier with play coming down the stretch in doubles before the Saints would close out a 5-2 victory to give Pella a runner-up finish.

Pella hosted the semifinal and final rounds this season on their new courts as they welcomed in the likes of Decorah, Kuemper and Xavier. The Lady Dutch would take on Decorah in the semifinal round to start the day in a duel that came down to the wire.

Pella picked up a 4-2 lead after singles play as they got wins from Claire Smock (6-4, 6-4), Abby Hietbrink (6-1, 6-1), Reagan DeJong (6-4, 6-2) and Addison Van Wyk (6-1, 6-1).

They would need just one win out of their three doubles matches to advance and all three were playing tight coming down the stretch. The No. 3 team of Van Wyk and Addi Namminga to off to a good start winning their opening set 6-2 while the No. 1 and No. 2 teams both fell 6-1.

Van Wyk/Namminga couldn’t quite close it out in the second and would end up going to a 10-point tiebreaker while the No. 1 team of Smock/Hietbrink bounced back to win the second set 6-1 and force a tiebreaker of their own.

Both were looking in favor of the Lady Dutch but it was Smock/Hietbrink closing out the winning point to win the tiebreaker 10-7 and advance Pella back to the state finals with a 5-2 overall win.

“We've just preached doubles all year,” Pella head coach David Bouska said. “The couple close matches we've had, that was the change, we were ready to compete and finish the job in doubles. Even though Claire and Abby were the ones that ended up winning it, we were also up 8-3 in another tie break and Sydney and Kytilin showed a bunch of fight. They lost the first set really handily and then they were on their way to winning and forcing another third set breaker there. We won where we needed to for singles, but to wrap it up in doubles, the way we did, especially when we lost some tough sets, it was just an awesome thing to see.”

Next up was a rematch from a year ago that came down to a third set tiebreaker in the final match. Pella got to the better of that matchup but Xavier was looking to grab the title this time around.

Singles got off to a tough start for Pella. Smock, the third place finisher at individual state, had to go up against sophomore Gabi Fleming, who already won her second consecutive state title last week. Smock was able to take two games off of Fleming in the first set but the sophomore’s power game was tough to counter and Smock would fall 6-2, 6-0.

The Saints picked up three more wins in straight sets and were sitting one win away from clinching the state title. They were in a pretty good spot at the time with Hietbrink already down one set and facing a championship point while Van Wyk got out to a 5-0 lead in set one before dropping six straight games to trail 6-5.

But the Lady Dutch had more fight in them. Hietbrink fended off the championship point and erased a 5-4 second set deficit to win three straight games and take the set 7-5 to force a super tiebreaker. Hietbrink rode that momentum in the tiebreaker to take it and complete an impressive 3-6, 7-5, 1-0 (4) comeback win.

Meanwhile on the other court, Van Wyk bounced back to force a tiebreaker in the first set, which she would go on to win 7-6 (6). Both girls were struggling with the growing heat in the afternoon but Wyk finished off a 7-6 (6), 6-3 victory to send play to doubles although she would be unable to compete in doubles due to cramps.

“They knew what had happened around them,” Bouska said of Hietbrink and Van Wyk. “They had seen the scores. They could have just folded and said okay we're done. I just love the grit that they had there. Abby fended off a championship point and Addison was up 5-0, lost the next six games, came back and tied it at six, buckled down in the tie break and then really battened it down in the in the second set. Even in singles, this can be a team game. I think that really exemplified that because it would have been really easy just to roll over and say they got us.”

The doubles teams would take to the court a short time after that with Pella needing to sweep all three matches to successfully defend their title.

All eyes would turn to the No. 1s with Fleming back out on the court with Smock and Hietbrink trying to keep Pella’s hopes alive. Unfortunately the Xavier duo would prove to be too much as they would clinch the title with a 6-0, 6-3 win to end the championship with a 5-2 overall victory.

An emotional Lady Dutch group accepted their trophy and medals as they were to finish off a very special season on their home courts. Despite losing five seniors from their title team in 2024, the new group stepped up in a big way to advance all the way back to the finals and give themselves a chance to retain their title in doubles.

“It's above and beyond what any of us could have expected,” Bouska said. "I just talked about it with the girls is this, every time a new challenge arose, they just kept meeting their goal. It became ‘hey, let’s shoot bigger.’ I’m just so incredibly proud because this is such a rare thing to lose almost an entire team and to be within just a handful of points of potentially getting another championship. That is purely from their work that they put in and their belief and camaraderie here that they had for one another was just unbelievable.”

The lone returnee from that title team was Smock, who will be one of three seniors along with Sydney Namminga and Kytilin Plate to graduate from this squad. Smock stepped up from the No. 3 on last year’s team to be No. 1 this spring. She went on to finish third at individual state all while also playing for the Pella soccer team that knocked off No. 3 North Polk last week to advance to state again. Smock has left her mark on both sports as she now sets her sites on state soccer this week.

“She's just such a competitor,” Bouska said of Smock. "She's not always the most vocal leader, but her energy on the court, the girls fed off that. She ends up with over 60 singles wins and I'm pretty sure she's up over 40 doubles wins to have a combined 100 wins. That's just so special and so unique and she just played great tennis. It's been such a wonderful ride to watch her develop and to watch her grow to love this game.”