Minot High senior Grace Olson – a student at Our Redeemer’s – won the WDA Tournament doubles title with her older sister Lila last year and helped the Majettes capture their second state title in three years. Photo provided by Minot High Tennis

Grace Olson has accomplished a lot during a career with the Minot High girls tennis team dating back to 2022.

The senior from Our Redeemer’s helped the Majettes win a state title in both 2023 and last season and won a WDA title in doubles playing alongside her older sister Lila last year as well. It’s a memory she says she’ll never forget.

That’s why Grace’s senior season will be a bit bittersweet, even if her and the Magi mirror what they accomplished a year ago, which was an undefeated season that included a WDA regular season title, a WDA Tournament title, a state title and her double’s title. This year serves as the first season since she joined the team five years ago that she won’t be sharing the court with her older sister.

“Playing together made us love tennis even greater,” Grace Olson said. “It’s something special to get to play with your sister and I tell every sibling that comes through our program to really take advantage of it because the time goes fast and before you know it one of you has graduated and you wish your time was a little bit longer. We loved playing together. It made our relationship on and off the court stronger and it overall made us love tennis even more. We talk about it all the time how we wish we had just one more year.”

The Olson sisters were 4-0 when paired together at No. 1 doubles during WDA play. They defeated Mandan’s Lauren Katzung and Lily Thomsen, 6-4, 6-4, in the WDA Tournament championship doubles match. They finished third at the state tournament. Another set of sisters, Skye Nielson and Kailee Nielson of Valley City, won the doubles state title.

This isn’t Grace’s first experience with seeing one of her relatives graduate from the program. Both her and Lila were on the team during their cousin Eden’s senior season. Eden Olson won back-to-back state doubles titles with Sofia Egge as a junior and senior and is tied with Raquel Egge for the program record in career wins with 157.

While Lila Olson’s loss is a big one, the Magi bring back plenty of firepower and are once again one of the favorites to capture a state title. Grace Olson is one of three returning all-state and all-WDA selections along with senior Kyllie Fettig and junior Ava Thuner. The Majettes were 22-0 last season and 9-0 in WDA play for their fourth straight regular season title and 14th overall and went through Bismarck St. Mary’s, Dickinson and Bismarck Century to capture its 15th tournament title. They made it look easy at the state tournament, sweeping Fargo Davies, Bismarck Legacy and Grand Forks Red River to secure their eighth state title. They won 130 individual matches and lost just 22. Minot High is now tied for the second-most state title with Grand Forks Central. Red River holds the most with 22, the last coming in 2017.

“It’s definitely high expectations coming off of our last three or four years,” Minot High coach Scott DeLorme said. “We’ve had some success and we pretty much bring back our entire team from last year that won the state title and went undefeated. We did lose one girl in the middle of our lineup, Lila Olson, who’s a big loss, but our girls below her have improved greatly.”

Some of those names include Ella Sherven and Alivia Sherven – the next batch of siblings – as well as McKenna Odahlen, who will serve as No. 4-6 singles in any order. Fettig, Thuner and Olson will serve as No. 1-3 singles. DeLorme said there are a few girls battling for the No. 7 spot to fill out the roster.

While the team goes by the Majettes moniker, there is plenty of Our Redeemer’s DNA on Minot High’s current run with Fettig, Olson and the Sherven sisters being Knights. Alivia Sherven won six WDA matches as a seventh grader, primarily at No. 6 singles.

Olson credits the younger players for the success of the program in recent years, as their drive and motivation makes the upperclassmen work even harder.

“It’s a lot of gratitude toward our underclassmen,” Olson said. “They come to practice every day putting up a fight to make us better and we wouldn’t be where we’re at without the underclassment who show up willing to work hard and put their best foot forward to make us better.”

Fettig went 8-0 in WDA competition during the regular season and won 15 total matches at No. 1 singles last year. Thuner won nine conference matches and 21 overall last season, rotating between No. 2 and No. 3 singles. Ella Sherven had 12 total wins at No. 4 and No. 5 singles. Grace Olson won 16 matches at No. 1 and No. 2 singles.

“We’ve been telling our girls at practice that we believe that we have three of the top five in the state on the court in practice with us each and every day with Kyllie, Ava and Grace, so we need to take advantage of it,” DeLorme said. “We see it every day, which we’re blessed to.”

With just about everyone returning from last year’s state title team, there aren’t a lot of question marks for DeLorme as it comes to the lineup. But the question that will loom over Minot High for most of the season is who will fill the shoes left by Lila Olson at No. 1 doubles. DeLorme said there are plenty of options on the table, but it ultimately comes down to the players’ decision.

One option is to have Fettig pair with Olson and pursue a doubles title instead of having Fettig go after a singles title like she did last season. Fettig was the runner up to Dickinson’s Shayna Klitzke at the WDA Tournament and placed third at state, defeating Thuner in the third-place match. Klitzke is a senior this season. To win a state individual title, the path will more than likely involve playing defending-state champion Sarea Gu from West Fargo Sheynne. Fettig said she hasn’t made a decision and will wait awhile before deciding which path she’d like to take.

“I’ll just see how the season goes, but Lila was a really big component in our lineup, so that’s some big shoes to fill,” Fettig said.

Another potential option would be to have Olson play singles and have a completely differently looking team at No. 1 doubles. Whether the decision gets made soon or in the final weeks of the season, DeLorme is not worried about any lack of chemistry.

“The good teams catch on pretty fast. It’s not a thing where you’re going to go through it one time and have the full-blown chemistry that you want, but if you play two or three times and you’re willing to communicate with your partner, I think that chemistry can click pretty quickly,” DeLorme said. “When you find the right pair, from a visual standpoint you can see it and when you talk to the players afterward, they’re pretty upfront and forthcoming. They’ll tell you right up front where it worked or didn’t work and you trust them.”

The Majettes have been on a dominant run over the last four years. They are 62-0 during the regular season and 84-2 overall. Their only two losses have come in the state title match, falling to Fargo Davies in 2022 and Valley City in 2024. The recent success dates back even further to 2018, when the Majettes won their first state title since 1991.

“They always say that success breeds success,” DeLorme said. “I think that’s true in our case. Going back to 2018 where we broke the streak and got through with our first state title, I think that catapulted the program a little bit. This crew was probably second, third and fourth graders, but they were in our tennis camp and they were with that team that won a state title in 2018. They saw them in the summer. The excitement that that team brought back eight years ago started all of this. This crew now worked with those kids and they had success and their older sisters had success. It’s been a little bit of a chain here with some siblings, which definitely helps, but we’ve had the fortune to have one or two really, really great players in each class now for the last five or six years and in high school tennis when you can consistently do that, you’re fortunate to have success and that’s what we’re doing.”

Minot High was picked to win the WDA in the preseason coaches’ poll, receiving nine of the 10 first-place votes and 81 total points. Bismarck Century received the other first-place vote and had 70 points. Bismarck Legacy (59), Dickinson (58), and Mandan (46) rounded out the top five.

The Majettes might be the best team on paper heading into the season, but the team knows that games aren’t played on paper, but rather the court, and anything can happen, which is why they are as focused on improving as they have been in prior seasons.

“It’s showing up every single day in practice and every single match and knowing that even if things don’t go our way, we need to figure out a way to bounce back from that and keep going,” Fettig said. ‘We always know that there is something we can work on and you just have to be able to dig into those things and get better every single day.”

The annual Minnot Round Robin scheduled for Monday, April 13, was cancelled due to rain in the forecast, but the Majettes will still begin their season that day with a pair of non-conference matches at Cameron Indoor Tennis Center against Williston at 11 a.m. and Century at 4 p.m.