Photo by Jake McNeill Marshall tennis player Aubrey Schaefer returns a shot during a tennis match against Worthington at Marshall High School on Tuesday afternoon.

MARSHALL — After getting off to a slow start this season, the Marshall tennis team claimed a 6-1 win over Worthington on Tuesday afternoon. The victory was the Tigers’ second in their last three matches after dropping each of their first seven to start the season.

“We play a very tough early schedule. There are a lot of tough teams on our schedule, so that’s always going to be a challenge in any season,” Marshall head coach Alex Cleppe said. “A lot of kids are playing varsity for the first time, but it’s been good to have two of the last three go in our direction. That means we’re going in a positive direction, we’ve just got to continue to try to keep carrying that momentum forward.”

Marshall claimed the first two singles matches handily, with Taylor DePover defeating Hannah McNab 6-2, 6-2 and Justine Kirst claiming a perfect 6-0, 6-0 win over Chloe Martinez.

Aubrey Schaefer dropped the first set of her singles match against Sadie Nickel 7-6 (4) but rallied for a 6-0 win in the second set before claiming a 10-7 win in the tiebreaker.

Marshall also swept the day’s doubles matches, starting with a perfect 6-0, 6-0 win from Peyton Boeck and Emry Weller over Mykala Phouanghet and Angie Dailey in doubles No. 1.

Olivia DeGroot and Jazilyn Steinberg-Jones toppled Ashley Esparza and Emma Heitbrink 6-1, 6-3 whileMakayli Burrell and Brooklyn Mauch beat Kah Blu Moo and Lily Brown in doubles No. 3 6-1, 6-1.

Last week Marshall broke its losing skid with a 4-3 win over Mankato West before falling to Mankato East in the same triangular. The dual capped off a long week for the Tigers in which they played four road matchups in five days.

“We always talk about no matter how the match goes, we need to take something from it and learn and apply it,” Cleppe said. “Whether it’s just our doubles movements, whether it’s trying to take those cross-court shots and volley them away in doubles, you’re always trying to improve and get better.”

Cleppe added that he’s had conversations with some of his players that the focus now is to improve as individuals and improve as a team, and he felt that his athletes did a good job of applying their lessons from the loss to Mankato East in their win over Worthington.

“We stole a little bit of their aggressiveness in doubles and tried to apply it. I think that worked out well for us today,” Cleppe said. “That’s just kind of the key, that’s what the kids have to do and that’s what I have to do as a coach. Just take something from every match and get better.”

Marshall improves to 2-8 overall on the season and 1-2 in conference play. They’ll look to keep adding to the win column on Thursday when they go on the road for a dual against Luverne at 4:30 p.m.