They may be short on upperclassmen, but the Aberdeen Roncalli Cavaliers will feature experienced tennis players this upcoming season.

“We have one senior, one junior and everybody after that is freshman or younger,” said first-year Roncalli coach Jonah Dignan, “so we’re pretty young.”

That said, the Cavaliers will be able to put four players on the court that have some level of varsity experience.

“We return six players overall, four varsity players,” Dignan said. “It’s not a bad spot to be.”

Roncalli will be led by lone senior Ezra Feickert, who will move from playing second flight singles last year to the top spot this spring.

Other players returning to varsity spots include Caleb Stoks, Liam Voehl, and lone junior Linus Johnson, who spent the last two weeks of the season and then the state tournament on varsity a year ago.

Johnson is coming off a break-out season in soccer for Aberdeen Central last fall.

“Linus is the most athletic person on every court,” Dignan said.

Lincoln Hundstad, Tysen Reecy and Isaac Cybulski comprise a trio that will round out the varsity roster.

“Those three will kind of compete for those last two varsity spots,” Dignan said.

The doubles teams are set for the top of the lineup.

“We were inside for the first week and so we played doubles a lot inside, and that kind of cemented it,” Dignan said. “So we’ll go, Linus and Ezra will be one, Caleb and Liam will be two.”

Dignan said this year’s team has quality athletes throughout the roster.

“This team, especially as a Class A team, is going to be really athletic and quick for what Class A is,” Dignan said. “We’ll use that to our strength.”

Each member of the varsity unit has been playing one sport or another heading into the spring.

“The seven players that make up the top six all played winter sports and most of them played fall sports,” Dignan said, “so we’re not coming in in ‘tennis shape’ per se, but physically we’re in great shape.”

Tennis in the spring often features a variety of weather conditions, from cold to start the year to hot when the campaign ends. And of course usually blustery elements.

“With returning all of those kids, I don’t really have to prep them for that. They kind of know what to expect,” Dignan said. “I believe State A state (tournament) has been played at least one day indoors for the last 17 years or something. So no one here is foreign to the concept of going inside for state and it being freezing cold.”

The Cavaliers start this season by playing in the three-day West River Invitational starting today in Rapid City. Dignan said the event will help him to get a better gauge for where the squad is at.

“We’re not setting hard expectations. We’ll kind of feel it out where we’re at. This Rapid trip, we’ll play some real good teams and some teams that have historically haven’t been great teams, so we’ll see where we kind of fall there,” Dignan said. “Last year we were kind of middle of the pack at state. I would expect we’ll be somewhere there, maybe up a little bit as guys have more experience at state and want to get back there.”