Hronová and Roberts head to state tennis tournament as No. 3 seed

Anna Hronová and Elise Roberts turned a season of growing trust into Jamestown High School’s clearest postseason strength, earning a No. 3 seed from the west and a trip to the NDHSAA State Girls Tennis Tournament.

The Blue Jays’ top doubles pairing had already shown what made it work long before the state bracket was set. Hronová and Roberts won together against St. Mary’s on April 21, teamed for another doubles victory in a 5-4 loss to Minot North on May 5, and closed the regular season with one more doubles win at Mandan on May 14. Those results reflected a partnership built on communication, court coverage and confidence, the core skills that decide doubles matches under postseason pressure.

That chemistry mattered even more for Jamestown because doubles in North Dakota’s postseason format is a team effort in the purest sense. NDHSAA team competition uses two doubles matches and three singles matches for each school or co-op, and postseason matches are played with no-ad scoring. Many matches are best-of-three sets, with a 10-point super tiebreaker replacing a full third set, so every point carries extra weight once the tournament starts.

Jamestown entered the state tournament after finishing 3-8 overall and 1-8 in West Region duals, a record that makes the Hronová-Roberts run stand out even more. The Blue Jays were tested all spring, but the doubles pair repeatedly delivered one of the program’s most reliable points. Roberts also signed with the University of Jamestown on Nov. 12, 2025, adding another layer to the state trip as she moved toward the next stage of her tennis career.

The 2026 state tournament was scheduled for May 28-30 at Choice Health & Fitness in Grand Forks. The team dual competition opened Thursday, May 28, and the individual singles and doubles brackets began Friday at 10 a.m. That centralized statewide setting brought Jamestown into a deeper field than the Blue Jays see in regular dual play, with opponents arriving from across North Dakota and the pressure of a bracket that rewards poise as much as power.

For Jamestown, a strong showing from Hronová and Roberts would mean more than a few wins on the scoreboard. It would give the Blue Jays a postseason result to build around, strengthen a program that spent much of the spring grinding through WDA losses, and confirm that one of the team’s best stories was also its most dependable doubles partnership.