Spencer, Ia (Northwest Iowa Now) – With the 2025-2026 Sports Year wrapped up for the KICD 9-County area, we now begin a series on the best teams over the last year.

We begin with the sport that kicked everything off, and although it would be fun to say pun intended, football wasn’t the first sport to swing in to action… it was Girls Tennis. There, pun intended, I did it.

The team that stood out of our 5 area schools that play tennis was the Spencer Tigers. There were some high expectations coming into the 2025 season for the Tigers. The previous year saw them go 17-7-1, splitting the Lakes Conference team championship and taking 2nd in the League Tennis meet. Spencer would fall in the Regional 2nd round to Spirit Lake 5-3. The Tigers brought most of their top producers back from the spring, to get ready for a new era of Fall Girls Tennis when the IGHSAU moved the sport to address the imbalance of sports in the spring sports season.

The Tigers went unbeaten in the regular season in duals, outscoring teams by an average of 8.4-0.5. In Tournaments, Spencer picked up a first-place finish at their own Dennis Price Invitational which hosted 9 teams on August 16th. Despite all of the success throughout the year, the most impressive regular season result for the Tigers was the Pella Invitational where they took 4th out of 15 teams, a group that included premier Tennis programs such as of course Pella, Shenandoah, Fairfield, Sergeant Bluff-Luton, Clarinda, Decorah, and St. Edmond of Fort Dodge. Spencer claimed the Lakes Conference Tournament with 13 points, edging out 2nd Place Spirit Lake who had 12.

The Tigers qualified a doubles team to the 1A State Tournament in Kennedy Graettinger and Brynn Merchant. The duo opened up against Greenley Grell and Clara LeConte of Central DeWitt in the opening round, losing 2-0. They would bounce back with a 2-0 win in the Consolation 1st round against the Shenandoah team of Jaylan Gray and Lyla Mather. The Tigers got the all-important win in the Consolation Quarterfinals 2-0 against Wahlert Catholic of Dubuque’s Annie Elbert and Claire King 2-0, locking up a medal for the State Tournament. The Tiger doubles team would fall in the Consolation semifinal 2-1 to Pella’s Reagan DeJong and Addison VanWyk, before losing 2-1 in the 7th Place match to Fairfield’s Ria Ross and Sriya Yammanur, giving Spencer 8th.

Spencer opened up their team postseason in Class 1A Region 4 as the #1 seed, dispatching Storm Lake 5-0 in the Quarterfinals. The Tigers advanced to the Semifinals, beating the #5 seed Bishop Heelan of Sioux City 5-2. In the Regional Championship against the #2 seed Sergeant Bluff-Luton, Spencer took 4 of the 6 singles matches, with Kennedy Graettinger, Brynn Merchant, Kate Elser, and Allie Ewalt all picking up wins by a combined 8-1. The Tigers handled doubles as well, taking 2 of the 3 matches.

Spencer moved on to the Class 1A State Tournament where they took the #5 seed, going up against the #4 seed Dike-New Hartford, who Spencer had beaten in the 3rd Place match at State two years ago. The Wolverines would take 4 of the 6 singles matches from Spencer. Brynn Merchant had a 2-0 win, and Kate Elser won a thriller against Dike-New Hartford’s Payton Fisher, as the Tiger won 2-1 with a 13-11 Set 3 tiebreaker.

The 4-2 edge in the singles meant Spencer would need to sweep the doubles matches. Graettinger and Merchant won 2-0 for the Tigers in the #1 doubles, but in the #3 doubles, Tareya Johnson and Payton Foster of Dike-New Hartford picked up a 2-0 win, locking up the dual and nullifying the #2 doubles result, and giving the Wolverines the win. Dike-New Hartford would go on to finish 4th.

Excitement is high again for the Spencer Girls Tennis team in the 2026 season. The Tigers do graduate a couple of key pieces in the first two singles positions in Abbey Crew and Allie Ewalt, but otherwise bring every key contributor back, including the State 8th Place doubles team of Graettinger and Merchant.

This has been the first feature on the Northwest Iowa Now KICD 9-County Area best teams of the 2025-2026 sports year.