The Bobcats are back.

A year after missing out on the season-ending state singles and doubles tournament, the Marshalltown boys’ tennis team will have representation again after Saturday’s Class 2A District 3 tournament at the Marshalltown Court Complex.

Senior Caleb Rasmussen and junior Evan Roush knocked off the top-seeded doubles team from Ames to earn their spot in the May 27-28 state tournament in Iowa City. Rasmussen and Roush finished as runners-up, earning one of two spots at the district tournament to advance to state.

After cruising through the quarterfinals with a straight-set victory, the Bobcat tandem took down Anirudh Manimaran and Wyatt Jones of Ames in a three-set barnburner — 2-6, 6-4, (10-7) — to earn their spot at state.

Linn-Mar’s Blake Reichert and Owen Thurm took a 6-2, 6-3 victory over Rasmussen and Roush in the finals, but both teams were already assured their spots at state.

“The boys played incredibly well,” said MHS head coach James Christensen. “They were a little bit tight at times against Ames when it was on the line, but they were definitely a little more free against Linn-Mar. Ultimately they just kind of ran out of gas, to be honest.”

Rasmussen and Roush earned the No. 4 seed for the doubles bracket, beat Landon Boddicker and Nathan Ketels of Linn-Mar in the quarterfinals for their first win together this season, and then knocked off their counterparts from Ames to get the Bobcats back to state for the first time since 2024.

Marshalltown had qualified a singles player or doubles team for state for five years in a row before last year’s absence.

“Caleb and any of our next three guys I think would have had a really good shot at making it to state, but Evan’s ceiling was the highest, and we knew it was going to take a very big effort in order to make the finals,” Christensen said. “And I have to hand it to Kyle (Smith) and Elliot (Kodis) — when we told them what the lineup was going to be, there weren’t any sad feelings or anything. I think both of those guys were looking forward to trying their hand at the singles draw.”

Kodis claimed the No. 4 seed for the singles bracket, received a first-round bye, and beat Sailesh Srinath of Ames, 6-2, 6-0, in his first match of the day. In the semifinals, Kodis ran into Linn-Mar’s Garrett Bauermeister, and the top seed in the bracket prevailed 6-0, 6-0, over the Bobcat junior.

Burmeister went on to beat Ethan Wang of Ames in the finals, 6-7 (4-7), 6-0, (10-3), while Kodis was defeated 6-0, 6-1 by Jens Strand of Iowa City Liberty in the battle for third place.

“Elliot played phenomenal and just happened to run into a top-five player in the state,” Christensen said. “Elliot was 14-2, he was an unquestioned seeded player in our process, which is not an easy task to do, so that was huge for him. He’s such a great singles player.”

Smith, who swapped between Nos. 3 and 4 singles for MHS this spring, was unseeded and needed a 6-1, 6-1 romp over Fisher Krob of Dallas Center-Grimes to get through the first round. In the quarterfinals, Smith fell 6-0, 6-1 to Strand.

“Kyle is the ultimate competitor, and he’ll try to diagnose what you aren’t good at and attack that as much as he can,” Christensen said. “He knows that he’s not Novak Djokovic out there with a tennis racket, but he’s an athlete and he’s going to run around and try to find a way to beat him.”

Marshalltown’s other district entrant was the doubles team of Parker Christen and Jacob Seberger, who played the Bobcats’ No. 3 doubles spot all season. Their first-round draw was against Liam Davison and Ryan Shileny of Liberty, and the visitors advanced with a 7-5, 6-1 triumph over the hometown team.

“Our guys had a chance in the first set, I think they had three set points and just couldn’t quite get over the hump,” Christensen said. “That kind of got us down a little bit in the second set and we couldn’t pull ourselves out in time.

“Those guys have played so many close matches and won so many super-tiebreakers for us over the year that we trusted them to go out and get it. I think they needed a couple more games to figure it out and unfortunately they just ran out of time.”

Rasmussen and Roush will await their draw for the 2A state doubles tournament and will play May 27 at either Iowa City West High School or the University of Iowa’s Hawkeye Tennis and Recreation Complex.