The summer tennis season has come to a close for the Hutchinson Aces, but this came after a solid effort from a short-handed squad that came up 12 points short of a top-three finish.

The top three teams (Sioux Falls, S.D., Minnetonka and Reed Sweatt Tennis Center) from the Shakopee Tournament advanced to sectionals later this month.

“We were in the race Thursday to place in the top three. What hurt our chances was having to default four matches on Friday. We were short one female player and therefore had to default four women’s singles matches,” Aces co-coach Lisa Rasmussen said. “That was a potential 48-point swing. Even if we had lost each of those matches, but scored just 16 points, that would have moved us into third place.”

Despite not moving on, Rasmussen and co-coach Eric Inglis were pleased with the effort from the team.

A perfect example was a match with Minnetonka. After losing to them 40-9 in June, Hutchinson closed the gap to 22-17.

Some of the Aces individuals also had great weekends. Andrew Paulsen played singles matches Friday, and in all three found himself trailing by a score of 4-1.

Joe Meier was the utility guy for the Aces, playing a little bit of everything over the two-day tournament: mixed doubles, men’s doubles and singles.

Shorthanded, Anna Rasmussen and Taylor Reiner had their work cut out for them. The duo played four women’s doubles matches and split duties in the mixed doubles matches — six matches each.

“(Eric Inglis and I) really see a lot of value and benefits of this program. It forces kids out of their comfort zone — we get singles players to play some doubles and doubles players to play some singles. It helps the singles player work on their net game and the doubles player work on their baseline game. And, it helps each player gain respect for the other’s game,” Rasmussen said. “We definitely want to see it grow next summer to include more teams at the different age groups.”

To read more about the Aces, check out Thursday's print edition on newsstands right now.

Eric Kraushar is the sports editor at the Hutchinson Leader. He can be reached at sports@hutchinsonleader.com.