The Grand Valley State women’s tennis team made its way across the state of Michigan this past weekend, upending conference foes Hillsdale 7-2 Saturday, Oct.1 and Wayne State 5-4 Sunday, Oct. 2.

The weekend sweep keeps the Lakers tied for second place in the GLIAC conference behind Northwood, which remains unbeaten in conference play.

“We played very up and down,” said GVSU coach John Black. “We need ready for the best from everybody. There’s a lot of good teams so we need to be 100 percent ready from start to finish.”

Due to inclement weather, the Lakers played on multiple court surfaces.

The rain came during the first match against the Chargers. This forced the teams to move to an indoor court surface, which was a hard rubber court that played extremely slow.

The next day, the Lakers faced the Warriors on their foam-like court that played faster. The Lakers’ players eventually made adjustments.

GVSU cleaned up its doubles play this weekend against two teams who were tied with the Lakers for second place in the GLIAC heading into the weekend, especially in the first match.

The Lakers swept the doubles competition against the Chargers 3-0. However, the Chargers had an answer right away as singles play began. GVSU’s No. 1 and No. 3 seeds fell to the Chargers. The team match was clinched after the bottom half of the Lakers singles players (No. 4, 5 and 6 seeds) all won their matches.

“We really need to work on starting out a lot faster in doubles by winning our doubles matches,” said GVSU junior Abby Perkins. “Its nice to have a lead going into singles so we don’t have rely so much on them.”

The second team match of the weekend was a lot closer than expected. The Warriors did not back down from the Lakers early on. They handed GVSU two doubles losses to begin the match.

GVSU had an answer, however, after falling behind 4-2. Sweeney and fellow junior Abby Perkins tied the total score with two singles match victories. Once again it was up to the The Nos. 4-6 seed players to decide the match. GVSU’s Aimee Moccia and Nicole Heiniger clinched the victory for the Lakers.

“I feel like we thought today’s match was going to be a little bit more decisive than it was,” Sweeney said. “I feel the different courts had a huge impact on all of our games.”

The Lakers will continue to try and have consistent play, as they have only consistently had up and down stretches.

“I think consistency of level of play is something we need to work on more, especially in doubles,” Black said. “We seem to be playing really streaky. We play really good for a few games, then fall apart for a few games.”

Part of the Lakers team will travel to Whitewater, Wisconsin this Friday, Oct. 7 to participate in the Wisconsin-Whitewater Invitational tournament. The rest of the team will head to Ohio for a weekend GLIAC series against Tiffin Saturday, Oct. 8, who is tied with GVSU for second place in the GLIAC, on and Findlay Sunday, Oct. 9.