High school girls tennis in Minnesota won’t be the same when the new season starts this month, and coaches sound thrilled with the change.

The Minnesota State High School League in the spring approved adding a third class to girls tennis, a move designed to create more state tournament opportunities for teams that had felt stymied under the old system.

“This is probably one of the biggest things to happen in tennis for the state of Minnesota in probably 20-some years,” Mankato East coach Paul Williams said.

Williams has coached strong teams with individual state tournament participants, but Class 2A Section 2 has proved daunting on the team side.

The semifinals might feature St. Peter or one of the Mankato schools, trying to match up against Eden Prairie, Prior Lake and Minnetonka.

“I don’t think we belong in that group,” St. Peter coach Aaron Rothenberger said. “We’ve had really good teams in St. Peter, and that’s a whole ’nother level.”

Delano was another strong girls tennis program that found itself overmatched in the section tournament.

“We competed really well against the schools our size,” Delano coach Kelly Holmgren said. “And then when it came time to have to play Maple Grove and Wayzata, it was really hard to motivate the girls, to encourage the girls to not give up hope.”

Now teams such as Delano and St. Peter can stay in Class 2A, with the largest schools filtered into Class 3A. Coaches hope this benefits medium-sized schools across the state.

Les Zellmann, a longtime coach and activities director at St. James, was one of the driving forces for the change as executive secretary of the Minnesota Tennis Coaches Association. He and fellow coaches made their first proposal in 2014. The MSHSL approved plans for a third class 10 years later, in February 2024.

Minnesota girls tennis had used a Class 1A/Class 2A format since 1978, and the record book is filled with dynasties from Edina, Minnetonka, Rochester Mayo, Rochester Lourdes and St. Paul Academy.

“About 32 power schools were shutting their door on a lot of good teams that couldn’t get by Minnetonka or let’s say Rochester Mayo and so forth,” Zellmann said.

There are eight teams per section now, down from 15 or 16 under the two-class system.

Williams said moving to three classes will give numerous schools legitimate hope of reaching the girls tennis state tournament. Holmgren said she can sense her team’s excitement this summer.

“We’re so grateful for the team and the people who fought for this and were able to get this change implemented after all these years of trying,” Holmgren said.

Zellmann said the coaches’ hope was for both girls tennis and boys tennis to add a third class, but the MSHSL required at least 192 schools to compete in tennis before adding a third class. Girls tennis qualified with 194 teams. Boys tennis has 172 teams and will not add a class.

In Minnesota, girls participate in tennis at higher rates than boys. In the 2023-24 school year, 6,117 girls played high school tennis in Minnesota while 4,142 boys played. A decade ago, in the 2013-14 school year, 4,916 boys played tennis while 6,558 girls played the sport.

“So the boys have a ways to go,” Williams said. “I hope they can get there.”