The women’s tennis team had an admittedly rough beginning to thepast week suffering an 8-1 defeat to Central on Tuesday.

However, the week ended on a high note after a dominatingperformance over Buena Vista and a strong showing against MissouriWestern State.

Women’s tennis coach Bob Nutgrass pointed to freshman MarthaDavis as the silver lining to the meet at Central.

Davis handed freshman Katie Moklestad her first defeat of theyear and also tallied the only win of the night for the team.

Later in the week, the Storm beat Buena Vista convincingly,putting up an 8-1 win to improve their conference record to3-2.

“[We] played strong against Buena Vista on Saturday and switchedthe lineup a little bit… [We] got some junior varsity players inthat got varsity wins.” Nutgrass said.

Later on Saturday afternoon, the Simpson women battled MissouriWestern State, a strong Division II opponent. The Storm playedstrong, but ended up losing 6-3 in the home matchup , droppingtheir overall record to 6-3.

Two freshmen, Davis and Amber Krieger, were the team’s stars ofthe week according to coach Nutgrass, who said they both playedoutstanding singles tennis all week long.

Nutgrass said the next two matches, one against Wartburg and theother against Loras, will be important ones for the team as theconference tournament approaches.

“Those will be two big matches for us to determine whether we’rethe four, five or six seed in the conference,” Nutgrass said.”Going into the conference tournament, right now it looks likeLuther will be one, Cornell two, Central three, and we’re fourth -if we can beat Wartburg and Loras.”

The next home match for the Storm will be this Saturday whenLoras comes to town at 12:30 p.m.

The end of the season is coming up fast for the women’s tennisteam with the Iowa conference tournament starting on Oct. 8, withsingles and doubles contests in Decorah.

The team tournament starts the next weekend on Oct. 15.

“We’re doing very well and are improving every time out,”Nutgrass said.