With the sun splashing through partly cloudy skies Saturday afternoon, the Spartan Invitational played on. Just not as planned.

The weather forecast called for rain and, since there was no alternate indoor tennis facility available, Onalaska officials withdrew from the event, contacting Madison Memorial coach and invite coordinator Chris Grainger early Saturday morning.

Left with a seven-team field, the coaches gathered for a scheduled 8 a.m. meeting and came up with an alternative to be played out at Memorial, in Middleton and in Verona.

"When Onalaska decided not to come … and because of (the possibility of) rain, I recommended that because we might not finish the day we should all play the match that we thought was most important in the first round," said Grainger, who agreed to a format in which it was decided to play three rounds with one team in each round gaining a bye.

Because it never did rain, the schools were able to get their boys through all three rounds.

The unbalanced field, however, meant the invite ended minus a true champion.

Middleton beat Green Bay Preble, Madison Edgewood and Verona to go 3-0. But because Madison East was one of the three teams with a bye and also went undefeated — the Purgolders beat three-time defending Spartan Invite champion Homestead in the first round and Verona in the second — the champion will be determined by the winner of the Big Eight Conference dual between the teams on May 12.

"I liked the idea from Chris … because we're going to play East later in the year, anyway," Middleton coach Greg Isermann said. "It's kind of weird having to wait, but we'll see how it works out."

The alternative proved helpful since it guaranteed some teams would face each other.

Madison East and Homestead, two teams who could contend this year, were able to square off with the chance to affect some potential individual and team state tournament-seeding scenarios.

Verona and Madison Memorial are in the same subsectional but don't play each other later in the year — so their meeting could prove helpful for purposes of seeding the subsectional.

All in all, Grainger thought the day was a success.

"It was strange, but everybody said they enjoyed the day (and) they enjoyed playing the teams they got to play," he said.