Mike Kraft/MDN
Minot High freshman Nolan Moore returns a shot during practice at Hammond Park on Tuesday, Aug. 19. Moore will serve as the No. 1 singles player for the Magicians this season after the team graduated five seniors from last year’s squad.
Add the boys tennis team to the list of Minot High fall sports programs that are going through a youthful renaissance this season.
Not since his second year at the helm back in 2010 can Magicians head coach Scott DeLorme remember one of his teams being so void of upperclassmen. Fast forward to 2025 and DeLorme finds himself with a roster that features just one senior following the graduation of five of their top seven players from a year ago.
“I started in 2009 and I inherited a bunch of seniors,” DeLorme said. “2010 was a down year. It was a young team. A lot of kids who had played very little tennis. This team is not in that boat. We’ve developed a program here where we have kids playing all year round. Even though they are young, they’ve played competitive stuff, whether it’s tennis, whether it’s baseball, whether it’s hockey. They know how to compete and we just need to use that as a way to improve.”
Olver Thompson is the lone senior on the roster this season and was an All-WDA selection as a junior, along with departed seniors Aidan Diehl, Greyson Schaeffer, Thomas Griffith and Nolan Callahan. The Magicians also graduated Conor Odahlen.
Thompson rotated between No. 5 and No. 6 singles last season and compiled a team-high seven wins in West Region dual competitions. He teamed up with Griffith at No. 2 doubles and the pair placed fifth at the West Region tournament. Now, the Our Redeemer’s Christian School student will serve as No. 2 singles and he and freshman Nolan Moore will lead the Magicians as the No. 1 doubles pair. Thompson is embracing his new leadership role, taking lessons from last year’s senior class.
“It’s a lot of responsibility just keeping the culture how it’s been in the past all the years I’ve been in high school and even before that,” Thompson said. “Getting the next generation ready for Minot tennis. I’m enjoying it while it lasts. Every day at practice just being positive and coming here ready to learn and getting better is what the seniors all did and something I try to model myself after.”
Thompson’s new doubles partner will serve as Minot’s No. 1 singles player this season after placing seventh at the West Region tournament last year. As a freshman, Moore will likely play the majority of his singles matches against older, more experienced players, but he is up for the challenge. One player he is looking forward to playing the most is Mandan’s Jared Christen, who placed second at WDA behind teammate Karter Hatzenbuhler, and sixth at the state competition.
“It’s going to be pretty fun,” Moore said. “There’s a lot of good guys you get to play against. I’m just going to go out and play my best.”
DeLorme said his top four singles players have been determined, with junior Hunter Ressler getting the No. 3 spot and freshman Henrik Evanoff slotting into No. 4. The rest of the lineup is less clear, but will come into focus over the next month or so.
“Our top four is pretty well set,” DeLorme said. “Those four have separated themselves a little bit and then after that we have four or five guys who have a chance. They all kind of bring something different to the table. They all kind of have different skill sets and we’ll plug those four guys in our lineup whether it’s singles or doubles come tournament time and whatever pieces we need to fill, then we’ll look at the next four or five of who has what strengths to fill in those pieces. We have some options, but we’re going to have to see how the season plays out.”
The real puzzle that DeLorme has to solve is what to do with his doubles pairings. No longer does he have the luxury of automatically being able to slot in Diehl and Schaeffer at the No. 1 spot and feeling like he can put a win in pen before the match even begins. Diehl was a four-time All-WDA and three-time all-state selection, while Schaeffer was a four-time All-WDA and two-time all-state selection during their run with the Magicians. The pair won back-to-back WDA doubles titles as juniors and seniors and placed third at state last season.
“They’ve been a team knowing every time we played we were going to write them into that No. 1 spot in the lineup and they were as good as it gets as one of the top teams in the state for the last two or three years,” DeLorme said. “This year we definitely have some talent. Nolan Moore has been around for awhile, Oliver Thompson is a senior who’s going to have a heck of a season for us. We’re going to rely on those two guys very heavily early on in the year and then hopefully as we go forward over the next six weeks our 3-8 continually get better and by the end of September, early October, we’ve got multiple options for doubles and singles lineups in that respect that kids have made some improvement.”
Diehl is the second-most winningest player in the program’s history with 205 victories between singles and doubles, trailing only Josh Oothoudt (221). Diehl won six WDA dual matches last season, rotating between No. 1 and No. 2 singles.
DeLorme said there are a number of factors that go into creating doubles pairings, but there is something more important than anything tennis related.
“They’ve got to get along,” DeLorme said. “That’s the biggest part of it. Sometimes you’ll get a big server. Sometimes you’ll get a good returner. Ultimately it comes down to a lot of reps in practice, a lot of sets in matches during the season to see what plays together. Sometimes it’s the pair you least expect to be together and then all the sudden they turn into a decent doubles team. We really don’t know where we’ll go with doubles teams this year beyond Nolan and Oliver at the top spot. After that, we’ll try a whole bunch of combinations and well talk to the kids after each match weekly and just see what they think, what they like, what they didn’t like playing with so and so and when it’s all said and done we’ll have a little say, but players kind of dictate that on a comfort level.”
While the Magicians may not enter this season as the juggernaut they’ve been in year’s past, they also don’t expect to fly under the radar. Minot was picked to finish third in the WDA preseason coaches’ poll behind Mandan and Bismarck Legacy. The Braves enter as the favorite after claiming the WDA Tournament title away from the Magicians last year, winning the trophy for the first time in program history and snapping Minot’s three-year reign.
“We’re young, but I think the goal is still the same thing: get back to the state tournament and keep Minot High how it’s been,” Thompson said. “And win the West. That’s another thing we just try to do every year. It’s a tight top four as usual. Legacy will be good, Mandan will have a good team. But just focusing on ourselves is going to be the biggest thing and getting better every day.”
Since the start of North Dakota high school boys tennis in 1976, the Magicians have only twice failed to qualify for the state tournament (1984, 2009). While DeLorme expects there to be some growing pains, particularly early in the season, he knows his roster has the team to keep up the program’s rich tradition of making it to the state tournament once again.
“That’s our gold standard,” DeLorme said. “That’s the ultimate goal is to get to the state tournament. Once you get there anything can happen, but this team is definitely going to have to improve over the next six weeks to make that happen. We’re good enough, but so are three or four other teams. We just need to push them every day and we’ve had a good seven or eight first days of practice, so hopefully that continues.”
DeLorme will get his first look at the team when Minot hosts the annual Minot Round Robin tournament at Hammond Park and Cameron Indoor Tennis Center. The tournament opens on Friday, Aug. 22, with the dual team portion beginning at 9 a.m. at Hammond Park. The Magicians will have matches against Bismarck High, Bismarck Century and Mandan. Minot North and Bismarck Legacy will also be part of the festivities. The Magicians have won the dual portion of the round robin 27 times.
The tournament concludes on Saturday, Aug. 23, with the individual portion split across the two venues.
