For head women’s tennis coach Ron Headlee, the 8-1 victory over Muskingum on Saturday showed that the diligent work that his team is putting in is starting to pay off.

“We have a hard-working team that is willing to put in the time and effort,” said Headlee. “When you work hard and are willing to learn the things you need to work on, that’s when good things happen.”

The victory over Muskingum was the Yellow Jackets second victory of the year (2-3, 0-3), already surpassing their win total from all of last year.

Headlee said that the practices have been better, and the girls have been building confidence.

“The girls have been practicing well and I am seeing them getting better each time out,” said Headlee. “We are actually hanging in matches and starting to get our confidence up.”

Headlee said he changed the lineup pairings for his doubles matches Saturday, noting that he moved sophomore Lauren Wadsworth up to the first team with freshman Kyleigh Schmidt.

The move paid off, with the pair defeating Muskingum’s number one team of Sara Welsh and Sara Stockdale, 8-4.

The two other doubles matches were forfeit wins for the Yellow Jackets as Muskingum only brought three women to the matches.

In the singles matches, junior Sierra Stevens defeated Stockdale 6-2, 6-3 and junior Noelle Hughes defeated Kayla Hall 6-1, 6-4.

Despite the low number of participants from the Muskies, Hughes looked at the match as a learning opportunity for the Jackets.

“Even though they only had three players, it was good experience and good that we got to play,” said Hughes. “The different pairings were good to kind of get us out of our comfort zones and play with different partners.”

Headlee is hoping that his team can carry this momentum into this week’s upcoming Presidents’ Athletic Conference matchup at home against Westminster Thursday at 4 p.m.

“Even in our loss to Geneva last week I thought we played well,” said Headlee. “We have been playing some good tennis.  Westminster is always a strong team, so this will be a good test for us to see where we are at.”

Hughes is looking forward to hitting the court against Westminster and building off of the win on Saturday.

“We are hoping to go out there with a positive attitude and apply some things we’ve been working on in practice,” Hughes said. “They are a really good team and it will be a challenging match.”

The Yellow Jackets will play back-to-back days this week as they travel to Mount Aloysius on Friday afternoon for a non-conference match.

“Mount Aloysius is having a good season,” said Headlee. “It will be a good test for us to go up there and face them. Hopefully we get some good weather and play well.”

Good weather has been hard to come by this season for the Yellow Jackets. They were scheduled to take on Thiel on Tuesday afternoon, but the rain forced the postponement of that match, which has since been re-scheduled for Oct. 10 at 4 p.m.