By Robert Whitmire

The SPASH girls tennis team will send its No. 1 and No. 2 Singles and No. 1 Doubles players to the WIAA state tennis tournament to be held at the Nielsen Tennis Stadium on the UW-Madison campus.

The tournament starts Thursday and wraps up Saturday.

Emily Luetschwager and Sabrina Tang enter the tournament as the only undefeated singles players in the field. Luetschwager is a four-time state qualifier and returns to the tournament to defend her 2015 division one championship.

Drawing a first round bye as the No. 1 seed overall, Emily enters the tournament with a sparkling 65-0 record over the past two seasons. She opens play at 3:00 PM on Thursday against the winner of an opening round match between Julie Hermesman (24-1, Sun Prairie) and Kimmy Steinert (28-5, Oshkosh West).

Tang, a sophomore, enters the tournament as the No. 12 overall seed sporting a 30-0 record on the season. She steps on the court in a first-round match Thursday morning at 10:30 AM against Mandy Schuster from Waunakee (19-13).

The Panthers No. 1 Doubles team of Susie DeBot and Emily Meier will open play Thursday afternoon when they meet Kendra Halverson and Sydney Johnson of Stoughton. The SPASH duo only played the second half of the season together and take a 10-4 record into the tournament.

“It was very exciting to qualify with my partner, Emily Meier because we have only been playing together for about half of the season,” said DeBot. “We play Stoughton in the first round and my old partner and I beat them earlier this season, so we play to do the same.”