STEUBENVILLE, Ohio—The Lady Baron tennis team ended its last home match of the season with a 6-3 loss to Westminster but the team played better than the score tells. Two weeks prior the Lady Barons lost 8-1 to the same team, and showed dramatic improvement through their willingness to fight through the end of the match.

"It's amazing what two and a half weeks of play will do to their confidence," head coach Jenna Lynch said. "They were just a lot more confident in themselves and a lot more confident in their strokes."

The extra confidence in their play especially helped no. 2 doubles team, Ashley Veazey and Claire Haddad, pull out a win despite being down at multiple moments in their match. After a long match of powerful back and forth volleys and intuitive communication, they defeated their opponents 9-7.

"The biggest win of today was no. 2 doubles especially because Westminster's doubles are so strong," Lynch said. "That was the proudest win of the day."

The other two wins of the day came from freshman Erin Coyne and senior Lucia Neugebauer's singles matches. Coyne skillfully outdid her opponent with cleverly placed shots winning with a solid 6-2, 6-2.

Neugebauer, the only senior on the team, came out ready to close her final home match of her career at Franciscan. After losing her doubles match she had a renewed sense of determination in her singles play.

She started strong pulling ahead right away winning 6-2 in the first set and started the second set with a 3-0 lead. Halfway through the second set she began to appear fatigued but didn't give in and toughed it out to win 7-5.

"They all played really well and I told them that as long as they leave it all out there and walk off proud of how they played that the score didn't matter," Lynch said.

The team is finished with conference play for the regular season but they play at Bethany College on Oct. 10 at 4 pm for their last match before the conference tournament.

"We are going to put our nose to the grind for the next two weeks to prepare for conference so we go in with zero expectations of our ability to win or not win," Lynch said.