Photo by Sam Thiel Marshall’s Leah Matzner hits a return to Worthington’s Ivy Jenson during their match on Thursday. Marshall defeated Worthington 6-1.

MARSHALL — The Marshall girls tennis team looked to bounce back Thursday after dropping its season opener earlier in the week. The Tigers did just that, controlling the tempo against Worthington in a 6-1 victory.

Marshall coach Alex Cleppe said he was pleased with the overall performance from his group and felt they were ready to go from the beginning.

“It was a good team win,” Cleppe said. “Everyone played pretty well; we came out ready to go at the beginning and kept battling and it was a good match all around for everybody, so I was proud of how our kids played.”

The Tigers jumped out to a strong start and never looked back, winning three of their four singles matches. At the No. 1 spot, Gionna Parsa defeated Worthington’s Kessy Aljets 6-0, 6-4 while Eden Knudson defeated Worthington’s Marah Darling 6-2, 6-1 at the No. 2 spot. Mariah Bergjord was able to outlast Worthington’s Taya Oberloh 4-6, 6-2, 6-0 at the No. 4 spot for Marshall’s third singles point, while Worthington’s Ivy Jenson defeated Leah Matzner 6-1, 7-6 at the No. 3 spot for its only point of the day.

In doubles action, the duo of Leah Schaefer and Regan Loft defeated Worthington’s Madison Johnson and Bailey Newman 6-2, 4-6, 6-4 at the No. 1 spot while Kayla Polejewski and Dani Ewing defeated Worthington’s Calah Riley and Stephie Bauman 6-4, 6-3 at the No. 2 spot. Aubrey Bjella and Mackenna Eickhoff defeated Worthington’s Riley Nickel and Brooke Nordseth 6-2, 6-1 at the No. 3 spot to help Marshall seal the victory.

Cleppe said their key throughout the meet was getting out to strong starts and continuing to battle to the end.

“I think we found some good combinations with our doubles kids and they really started strong from the beginning with their communication, their ground strokes and just their court awareness,” Cleppe said. “Our singles started out pretty strong; Gionna came out of the gates and played her game and Eden also came out pretty strong. Leah and Mariah struggled a bit early but both kind of kicked it into gear after that first set and really started playing hard. For Mariah it worked a little more in her favor than with Leah, but Leah was right there with that second set tiebreaker, so it’s good to see them getting it going even after a tough start.”

Up next

Marshall will have a familiar face in its next meet, with the team facing Worthington again on Monday at 11 a.m. Going into their second matchup, Cleppe said both sides will have more knowledge about each other, so they need to come out with a similar level of focus as they did Thursday.

“I told the kids that we’re going to play the same team again so expect a tough challenge. They’ve now seen us so they know what to expect and we know what to expect,” Cleppe said. “It’s always hard to play a team twice, it’s even harder playing them back-to-back because you never know what can happen. We just need to bring our ‘A’ game, battle hard and come out ready to play and we’ll see what happens.”