LINCOLN — Kurt Kiesel chalked up the 2012 Nebraska Class B High School Girls Tennis Championships as a tough learning experience Thursday in Lincoln.

The Wolverines won one match out of five on the day, but learned a great deal about incentive, methodology and execution.

“It was a good experience for both players and coach,” Kiesel said. “I have been to 15 state tournaments as an assistant coach, but it is a different view going as the head coach. I think this year’s state meet gave some of the girls a chance to see the level of tennis they can reach and hopefully a bit of incentive to work in the offseason to get closer to that level.”

Kiesel said the field was a tough one, with all 32 players in each of four brackets having first-round matches with no byes.

“I would have loved to have more first-round wins, but everyone, including the top seeds, had first-round matches and only four matches in each bracket pitted unseeded players against unseeded players,” he explained. “We had one seeded player in Mirisa Hernandez, the No. 12 seed at No. 2 singles, and she played well to beat a girl she had defeated earlier in the year who had improved since their previous meeting.

“We had two first-round matches against the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds and I feel the girls played well in those with their backs against a wall. Our unseeded vs. unseeded match (No. 1 doubles) was against a team we haven’t seen due to the rainout at the Ralston Invite so we went in not knowing what we were facing, played one of our better matches of the year and just came up short.”

For more on this story, see the May 23 print or e-editions of The Crete News.