Hermantown Girls Tennis Team Named Academic All-State

Oct 10, 2012

Dwight Cadwell-NSO

The 2012 Hermantown girls’ tennis team leads a host of schools that have been named all state academic this fall. The Hawks were given the gold award for tennis teams where the participants have a GPA of 3.75 and greater. There is also a silver award which is for schools that have a GPA of 3.50 to 3.74.

Members of the 2012 Hermantown Tennis team are Anna Mattson, Anna VanDeelen, Abby VanDeelen, Bailey O’Connell, Brianna Meyers-Garcia, Danielle Luke, Elizabeth Carlson, Elizabeth Heehn, Jordan Cuva, Madeline Bremel, Madelyn Miller, Mariah Ruhanen, Molly Eng, Myah Kari, Rebecca Henningsen, and Stephanie Collins.

“It’s a real credit to the kids, we have a bunch of kids who are really focused on academics,” Hermantown Head Coach Kelly Cooke recently told NSO. “They do their homework on road trips and if you look around they’ve got their books out, they’re doing homework between matches; they’re certainly cheering on their teammates, but we emphasize its school first.

Other local Class AA schools that received the girl’s tennis gold award were Duluth East, North Branch, and Chisago Lakes. Single A schools that received the gold award included Aitkin, Mora, and Pine City.

Class AA silver award member school awards went to Becker, Hibbing, and St. Francis. In Class A, the silver awards went to Duluth Marshall, Virginia and Park Rapids.

Aitkin received a Gold award in Class A boys, while Cook County and Pine City were awarded silver awards. Cambridge-Isanti was given the Gold award in class AA, while there were three silver award winners in class A, and those were North Branch, Andover, and St. Francis.

Cooke also explained his athletes are not taking easy classes just to keep up their GPA. “Absolutely not, these kids are in honors chemistry, last hour of the day and you don’t want to be getting out of school with a CIS chemistry class, but these kids are making it work.” Cooke explained his team also applies the team concept to their schoolwork. “They are all smart kids who take similar classes, so I see the older kids helping the younger kids a lot. We try to instill that in them, because this is an academics first school.”

Northland Sports Online would like to congratulate the entire Hermantown Hawks girls tennis team and their Head Coach Kelly Cooke on their achievement.

Dwight Cadwell can be reached at dwight@northlandsportsonline.com