The BG tennis team is back on track.
After narrowly losing their first two Mid-American Conference games last weekend after an 11-0 start, the Falcons picked up their first MAC win of the season this past weekend.
The Falcons defeated Northern Illinois, 7-0, Saturday afternoon at Shadow Valley Tennis Club in Toledo.
Coach Penny Dean said the win helped bring up the team’s overall morale.
“It feels good,” she said. “It’s helped our spirits and our attitude for practicing. We weren’t used to losing.”
Coming back home will usually get a team out of a slump. The match was the first home match for the Falcons (12-2, 1-2) since Feb. 16.
“It’s really nice to have a win at home,” Jenna Nussbaum said. “We’re undefeated at home (7-0), so I think whenever we play at home, we remember that and bring that confidence. It was just really nice having the support of our crowd.”
It didn’t take long for the Falcons to get back to their winning ways.
For the eighth time in 14 matches this season, the Falcons swept the doubles point to take an early, 1-0, lead.
The duo of Christine Chiricosta and Kelsey Jakupcin got things started at the top flight where they won, 8-5.
The senior co-captain tandem of Nussbaum and Andrea Volle won, 8-4, at the second flight, while the duo of Katia Babina and Sam Kintzel won, 8-3, in third-flight action.
For the fifth time this season, BG swept all six singles matches.
NIU (3-9, 1-3) opponents didn’t win more than four games in any given set in five of the six matches, while the remaining one required a tiebreaker.
Jakupcin defeated NIU’s Nao Umemura by identical 6-4 scores in first-flight action. Chiricosta, Babina and Kintzel all picked up straight-set wins at the second, third and fourth flights, respectively.
Nussbaum’s fifth-flight match against Jenny Edner was the lone match to require a tiebreaker. After Nussbaum captured the opening set, 7-5, Edner came back to win the second set, 6-4, forcing a tiebreaker. But Nussbaum won the tiebreaker, 10-6, to take the win.
Rounding out the Falcon netters was Stefanie Menoff.
After being sidelined the week prior with an injury, Menoff came back strong, winning her match, 6-1, 6-4, against Dora Delgadillo in the sixth flight.
Next up for the Falcons is preseason MAC favorite Buffalo.
“It’s a big weekend for us,” Dean said. “[Buffalo’s] definitely a strong team, but we seem to match up well against them. We took them to the wire last year and beat them the year before, but they’ll battle in every spot.”
As long as the team plays with the intensity they’ve shown in the previous three matches, it can certainly beat the preseason MAC favorite.
“We know in any match we play, if we bring the intensity then we’re going to play the best we can and that’s all we can ask for,” Nussbaum said.
The Falcons will face Buffalo (7-5, 2-1) on Friday before facing Akron (5-8, 0-3) on Saturday. Both matches are scheduled to start at 1 p.m. at BG’s new tennis complex.