Beavers leading through first day

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

April 25, 1999

As far as rookie-year head coaching jobs go, Reva Howe's first year as the Beavers women's tennis coach has been unimaginable.

First her team swept the five-match Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference regular season -- a first in school history. Then they completed the first 10-win season in BSU tennis history -- finishing 10-4. And now, after Day One of the NSIC championship meet in Winona Saturday, the Beavers are poised to claim the school's first-ever tennis conference championship.

Not bad for a rookie.

The Beavers sit in first place with 24 team points, followed by Minnesota-Duluth with 18 and Winona State with 16.

And with BSU six points ahead of the field, and being the team with the most players in the matches, it might be a long shot for Minnesota-Duluth to close the gap.

"It's a matter of staying on track (Sunday) if we're going to win it," an ecstatic Howe said in a phone interview Saturday. "We'd probably have to lose everything at this point to finish second."

However, even though the trophy is all but sitting in a BSU display case, there are some key matches pitting BSU and UMD players that could determine the outcome, including:

• The No. 4 singles title pairing BSU's Tara Bromenshenkel versus UMD's Alli Wiedemann.

• The No. 5 singles title pairing BSU's Hannah Warweg versus UMD's Kasi Boucher.

• And the No. 6 singles title featuring BSU's Brittany Will versus UMD's Tasha Topel.

"(This season) has been pretty close to what we've dreamed of," Howe said.