La Salle-Peru’s Dagny Greer and Julia Garcia had plenty of motivation going into the Class 1A Ottawa Sectional this fall.

For Greer, a senior, it was her last chance to qualify for state. For Garcia, it was her only opportunity to advance to state as she’s a foreign exchange student from Brazil.

“We were like, ‘We need to go to state,’” Garcia said. “I wanted to have that experience, and Dagny, it’s her last year because she’s a senior, so that motivated me because I wanted her to have that experience. I think both of us wanted to have that experience, so we played our best.”

The Cavalier duo, who entered as the No. 6 seed, placed third at the sectional to earn a trip to state.

“I just think it’s so cool that in her one year here she made it to state,” Greer said. “And my last year as an L-P student, I also made it to state. It was just very fulfilling and rewarding. It made the rest of the tennis season worth it.”

Greer and Garcia were the area’s only state qualifiers. They finished with an 11-7 record and placed second in the No. 2 doubles bracket at the Interstate 8 Conference Tournament.

For all they accomplished this season, Greer and Garcia are the 2025 NewsTribune Girls Tennis Players of the Year.

“I thought the season ended as well as we were hoping for,” L-P coach Aaron Guenther said. “Putting them together midseason on the fly made for some tough adjustments, but they were able to come together, really jell well and played well enough to make state.”

Greer started the season as a singles player, but as Guenther watched Greer and Garcia play and saw results and matchups, he felt the two would make a strong doubles team.

“Dagny is tall and long, so she’s able to be the finisher at the net and she had singles experience from earlier in the year, so that really helped her with her baseline game,” Guenther said. “Julia has a motor that doesn’t stop, so she’s able to hunt down every ball she can get when she’s on the baseline then up at the net she has great touch to where she could always finish the ball and put it where it needed to be.”

Greer and Garcia first played together Sept. 23, beating Rochelle’s No. 2 doubles pair.

“With her being from Brazil, it was very different than being with someone who I’ve known for a few years,” Greer said. “But, honestly, I think that kind of made it better. We had to get to know each other and how each other played and how we could work together.

“If things went wrong on the court, it didn’t affect our friendship outside. Whether we had a bad match or bad game, we came back stronger and didn’t let it affect our dynamic.”

Garcia said the pair’s connection grew through the season.

“We helped each other to be our best,” Garcia said. “When I made a mistake, she would come help me and I would help her. Not being angry with each other for our mistakes and our communication for sure helped.”

The pair showed their ability to overcome past mistakes at the sectional.

Greer and Garcia lost to Ottawa’s Rylee Harsted and Brooklyn Byone 6-4, 6-0 at the conference tournament but came back to beat the Pirate pair 4-6, 7-6, 7-6 in the sectional third-place match.

“That was probably our best match of the season,” Greer said. “We played amazing.”

At state, the L-P duo lost both of its matches, including a 6-0, 6-0 first-round loss to Deerfield’s Shir Paz and Anna Dickinson, who went on to place third.

“It was mind-blowing,” Garcia said about going to state. “In the beginning, I didn’t even consider that going to state was something that was going to happen. Going to state and seeing all the girls who practice their whole lives was really incredible. Getting to know other people and see how they got there was cool.”

Garcia played tennis when she was around 5 years old but gave up the sport after about a year. She returned to it this fall when she arrived at L-P.

“I knew that sports would make my life here easier with making friends, and I really like to play sports,” said Garcia, who plans to play soccer in the spring. “I always wanted to come back to tennis but never could.

“Most of my friends are from tennis, and being friends with them helped me make other friends. Now I have really good friends I’m going to have for life, so that’s really good.”

Greer grew up playing volleyball but switched to tennis as a freshman.

“I decided I didn’t want to play volleyball in high school, but I still wanted a sport during the fall because I’d never really had a time where I hadn’t played a sport,” Greer said. “I was, like, ‘I’ll try tennis for fun,’ and I really liked it.

“The girls I played with my freshman year, who were a year older than me, they were such good teammates. The way that coach [Scott] Blessman coached my first two years made me want to stick with it. He’s was a very fundamental. He’s a good coach for when you’re starting out. He made it fun, but I also learned so much. I like the dynamic [of tennis]. I think it’s a lot of fun and it’s actually a lot harder than I feel people give it credit for. It’s work, and I really enjoyed that about it.”