Isaac Seberger had already missed a chance to finish off Mason City, so he wasn’t about to let it happen again.

Marshalltown’s No. 1 singles player teamed with fellow senior Isaac Seberger and scored the deciding victory at No. 2 doubles, lifting the 10th-ranked Bobcat boys’ tennis team to a 5-2 victory over the Riverhawks in Saturday’s Substate 4 semifinals at the Marshalltown Court Complex.

Marshalltown (14-1) was leading 4-1 in singles play with Benscoter on the court against an opponent he defeated in the first dual meet of the season: Mason City junior Seth VandenBerg. That opener went to Benscoter after a third-set super-tiebreaker, but VandenBerg flipped the script and gave his Riverhawks (11-5) renewed hope.

“I’d beaten that guy earlier this year in a super-tiebreak so to be back playing another one might have been a little frustrating,” Benscoter said. “I’m pretty comfortable in those, and up until this I was undefeated in them, so I guess you gotta lose one at some point.

“I knew that if I went on to doubles I was gonna have fun and I’m probably gonna win, so in my mind it was a win-win and I wasn’t too mad about losing. I would have rather won that one, but what are you gonna do?”

The Isaacs might have been Marshalltown’s only hope, and they came through in the clutch to allow the Bobcats advance.

With the Nos. 1 and 3 doubles teams down a set, Benscoter and Seberger eventually finished off what they started, but in suspenseful fashion.

The Bobcat duo won the opening set 6-0 and led 5-4 in the second before a brief surge by Mason City’s Michael Solberg-Maas and Max Lang earned them the set, 7-5. Forced into a deciding third set at almost the same time as Marshalltown’s other doubles teams dropped their respective openers, Benscoter and Seberger played a clean super-tiebreaker and finished off the 6-0, 5-7, (10-4) win for the 5-2 team victory.

“I just reminded them that doubles tennis is all about holding serve,” MHS head coach James Christensen said of the Isaacs’ 5-4 lead in the second set. “Isaac had won every service game until then, it was a bad time to have a couple off-serves, so Mason City came out of that set on a high note but our guys settled down and knew it was more about them than it was about Mason City playing really well.

“They settled down and just played really well in the super-tiebreaker.”

Mason City needed to sweep all three doubles matches to steal the win from the host Bobcats, who had defeated the Riverhawks 7-4 back in the April 3 season opener for both teams. But in the 9-match format, Marshalltown’s strength in numbers was reduced with fewer doubles contests.

Saturday’s rematch was headed toward that same type of nailbiting situation.

“I was aware, but I was trying to be extremely unaware,” Seberger said of the results on neighboring courts. “Everytime I looked somewhere else they would say to focus on your game, so I knew what that meant. It was our match that mattered the most.”

The doubles contest was Seberger’s only bout of the day as he is not a part of the Bobcats’ singles lineup. For a moment, with Marshalltown leading 4-0 during singles play, it appeared he wouldn’t get called into action. Instead, after seeing his doubles partner fall in super-tiebreak, he stepped into a volatile situation and handled it as well as he could.

“It was a little nerve-racking obviously, but I’ve got to show I can do it too,” he said. “I’m on this team and part of the lineup and we’re going to succeed, but being the guy who’s not playing singles, I know for a fact I’m the target every time.

“Of course I love to play and it’s a fantastic game and I’m glad I’m on the roster, but if I didn’t have to play (today) I would pat myself on the back, pat the team on the back and we’re done. If I didn’t play that’d be a win, but it’s also a win to play so it’s a win-win scenario.”

The No. 1 doubles team of Adam Boone and Caleb Rasmussen and the No. 3 tandem of Jacob Christen and Kyle Smith both suffered first-set losses, but they had also helped the Bobcats get to the point of victory through singles play.

Smith scored his 6-1, 6-4 win at No. 6 singles over Jackson Squier to start the Bobcats on their way, and Boone followed suit at No. 2 with a 6-4, 6-1 triumph over Trenton Kruger. Elliot Kodis made it 3-0 Marshalltown with his 6-1, 3-6, (10-7) win over Solberg-Maas at No. 5, and Rasmussen finished off his 6-3, 6-1 victory over Lang at No. 3 to make it 4-0 Bobcats.

Firmly in the catbird seat, Marshalltown was unable to finish off the Riverhawks before doubles play. Avery Beyer toppled Christen at No. 4 singles, 6-2, 6-4, and VandenBerg’s rally over Benscoter at No. 1 breathed new life into Mason City’s hopes.

The Riverhawks opened the day by defeating Cedar Rapids Kennedy 5-0 just to meet up with Marshalltown, and they weren’t about to spend their whole day on the courts not to put up a brilliant fight.

“They’re a team that’s very similar to us,” Christensen said. “They have good depth, we’re pretty evenly matched all the way through and I think you could see that with the 1s and 2s. They flipped the scores on us this week.

“It just shows this is an any-given-Saturday sort of match for us. Mason City is rarely a ton better than we are or a ton worse, and I think this is the first time we’ve seen them in the postseason and we knew it was going to be a battle.”

MHS advances to face No. 7 Linn-Mar (11-6) in the substate finals at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday in Marion for the right to advance to state. The Lions have advanced to the state tournament each of the previous five seasons and 11 of the last 14.

“We have a couple common opponents,” Christensen said. “They’ve beat the same people that we beat by slightly better scores, perhaps that is how they were able to get the 1-seed.

“I think we match up really well with them, honestly.”

Marshalltown has qualified for the state meet four times, including three-straight from 2021-2023.