June 17, 2021
MPA’s 2007 Girl’s Tennis state championship, the Panthers’ first in girl’s tennis, was the final, and most difficult step in Beth Larson’s illustrious and successful prep tennis career. But the story does not start at the beginning of the 2007 season. It starts much earlier.
Larson began her journey in the fall of 2002 as a seventh grader on the varsity tennis team. Over the next six years, she helped change the culture of MPA girl’s tennis forever, becoming the leader that finally brought a championship team together.
She, of course, had her individual success too, as a five time all-conference honoree in the Tri-Metro Conference, three time team captain, and two time MSHSL class A doubles state champion. But it was her commitment to leading her team through the hardships of three consecutive second place finishes at the state tournament that puts her among the all-time greats in MPA girl’s tennis history. And in 2007, she finally found the breakthrough she had long sought.
“Winning the team state tennis championship my senior year required that the entire team overcome many barriers and work very hard. I was so proud of the effort the whole team put in,” said Larson. “Although it was great winning two individual doubles state championships, by far my favorite athletic accomplishment at MPA was having the opportunity to share the state championship with the rest of my team!”
A multisport athlete from a young age, Larson also starred on the diamond for the Panthers’ fast pitch softball team. She was a four time Tri Metro all-conference honoree and team captain as a senior. Her achievements in tennis and softball earned her two of MPA’s most prestigious athletic awards, the Panther Award and the Athena Award, representing the culmination of years of hard work and dedication to athletics. Beyond athletics, Larson was also a talented bassoonist. She was selected to be a member of the Minnesota All-state Concert Band in 2007.
Larson will forever hold her MPA athletic memories close because of the connections she had with her teammates. “Although tennis can be a very individualized sport, I could not have achieved what I did without the support of my teammates. Some of my closest friends from both high school and college are those I made while playing tennis and softball.”
Larson continued her tennis career collegiately at Lawrence University in Appleton, WI. Her experience as a prep tennis player for the Panthers prepared well her for what lie ahead in college.
“Participating in athletics at MPA instilled in me an appreciation of resilience,” noted Larson. “Resilience significantly contributed to my athletic successes throughout my collegiate career since it helped me focus and maintain a positive attitude when I faced challenging opponents and daunting matches.”
Larson’s name dots the Lawrence record books. She holds the Vikings’ record for wins and winning percentage, and she’s the only player in Midwest Conference history to win two conference championships in number one singles and two conference championships in number one doubles. She was honored as Lawrence women’s tennis most valuable player in each of her four years in Appleton, and, beyond the court, she was a three time Academic-All Midwest Conference honoree.
Larson graduated Cum Laude from Lawrence in 2012 with a degree in French, francophone studies and biology. She also earned a master’s degree in International Public Health from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. After spending two years managing a $3 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for Tostan, an NGO working in West Africa, Larson has returned to the United States and joined PMA2020, an organization doing survey work in developing countries as a francophone research data manager. She is now a doctoral student at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Population, Family and Reproductive Health Department. Her research interests include the use of normative approaches to understand family planning use and how social norms affect people’s decision making around family planning internationally, and with a focus on francophone West Africa.
