GRAND FORKS — Grand Forks Central’s Jason Ling and Rylan Spicer were tied with Jamestown’s Luke LeFevre and Braxton Burkett when the crowd began to grow.

All of the other matches at the North Dakota boys tennis individual state tournament had wrapped up. Spectators and players began to gravitate toward the day’s final contest: the doubles championship.

Ling and Spicer, the No. 1 seed out of the East, had started strong with a 6-1 win in the first set.

LeFevre and Burkett, the West's No. 1 seed, rallied for a 6-4 victory in the second set to force a decisive third.

“We just had to get refocused after that second,” Spicer said. “It just started with getting the feet moving, getting mentally back into it.”

In a back-and-forth third set featuring loud applause and cheers from the gathered

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