If experience leads to success, the Aberdeen Central tennis team should have a big spring ahead.

The Golden Eagles return their entire lineup for the upcoming season, which gets underway later this week.

“That’s the nice part of not having any seniors last year,” said Central coach Trent Kurtz. “Obviously, you miss some leadership and you miss some experience last year, and now we’re on the other end of that. Now we have a lot of guys with experience.”

The Golden Eagles will be led once again by seniors AJ Prehn, Mason Ligon, Mika Dannen, Brock Anderson and Carson Goethals, juniors Gannon Pederson, Wyatt Kiesz, and Josiah Grandpre, sophomore Aric Tennant, and freshman Dawson Pederson.

With such an experienced crew returning, Kurtz said it gives the squad a better starting point than in some years.

“They know what the expectation is and then the expectation for them higher this year obviously than it was last year. Last year for a lot of them it was first year playing varsity. So it’s just kind of a different level,” Kurtz said. “We’ve got our the top six singles back, we’ve got a couple guys that filled in and played some singles, a couple other guys that played varsity doubles. So, we’ve got around eight guys that have actual varsity experience, so expectations are higher.”

So does that mean that it’s an automatic plug and play from last year?

“All spots are open. Every year we’ll do that,” Kurtz said. “Now, we have a better starting spot than we normally do, but it’s not like we’re just going to take last year’s ranking and put it in. It is a good starting spot as far as where we start challenge matches, and who we pair against each other in singles matches.”

Central will start its season with a bang like it always does with six matches in three days to start the season with a limited amount of practice time before heading to the West River Invitational Thursday through Saturday.

The quick rush to start the season has its pros and cons, according to Kurtz.

“There’s positives and negatives to it. I always say after when we get done with that trip I really like it, because I think it gives us some match experience before some other teams,” Kurtz said. “So then some of those teams we play the following week or the next couple weeks, we have some matches under our belt, which is an advantage. The negative is, we’re trying to rush to put together a lineup.”

Last year Kurtz tweaked the initial season-opening lineup and that could be the case again this season.

“Whoever we play out in Rapid, it’s not guaranteed that’s our lineup for the rest of the year,” he said, “but it gives us a starting point.”

While the Golden Eagles have yet to play a match this season, Kurtz said his players have put in the work in the offseason in preparation for the upcoming campaign.

That includes court time dating back to last summer.

“Obviously, we want to do better than we did last year, but we’ve got a lot of guys that have kind of bought into getting better. We had a really good summer,” Kurtz said. “If you came by the courts Tuesday-Thursday mornings at 7 a.m., you’d see 10-12 of these kids there every morning. For kids to do that all summer long, that’s impressive. We’ve had a bigger group playing indoors over this winter. We don’t always get that, so I’m excited for that.”

In theory, high school athletes tend to get bigger, stronger, faster as they get older. That growth process has Kurtz excited as he thinks about heading into the upcoming season with a physically stronger group of players that already has a lot of varsity experience.

“Whatever sport you’re in, in the offseason you have two goals: one, to get more skill, and we have a lot of guys that put in a lot of time on the court, so we did that, and one, to become a better athlete,” Kurtz said. “Just looking at these guys right now they’re bigger, they’re stronger, they’re faster. They’ve matured a year, some of them have done a good job in the weight room, but they’ve put in court time, they’re just better athletes right now, so that’s exciting.”