The Ferris men’s ten­nis team lost its 21^st con­sec­u­tive match to con­fer­ence foe Northwood on April 8.

Ferris started the match with inten­sity, win­ning two of three matches in dou­bles play. The Bulldogs could not hold on dur­ing sin­gles play, win­ning only one of six match-ups. Northwood’s tri­umphant sin­gles play led to the 6–3 victory.

The Ferris tan­dem of senior cap­tain Kyle Revall and junior Steven Roberts upset the Timberwolves’ No. 22 nationally-ranked pair­ing of Peter Kazianschuetz and Frederic Schoelzel 8–6 in dou­bles play. Ferris’ Ahmet Demir and Arin Enge also grabbed an 8–2 dou­bles victory.

Bulldog head coach Alex Palladino said the team stayed com­posed through­out the match and said that they played well overall.

“I feel really pos­i­tive about the dou­bles per­for­mance,” said Palladino. “I’m pretty enthu­si­as­tic about those matches because dou­bles hasn’t nec­es­sar­ily been our strength all sea­son long.”

Sophomore Jack Swan cap­tured the lone win in sin­gles play for Ferris with a 6–3, 6–4 vic­tory over Northwood’s Marcus Oliveira.

“Northwood looked a lit­tle slug­gish dur­ing dou­bles play, and they woke up dur­ing sin­gles play,” said Palladino. “Singles is a whole dif­fer­ent game and they were able to pull out the sin­gles spots to get the win.”

Northwood took over sole pos­ses­sion of first place in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference stand­ings with a 5–0 con­fer­ence record and is the last unbeaten team in league play.

The loss against Northwood did not put Revall’s expec­ta­tions for the sea­son on hold as he believes the Bulldogs have what it takes to be sec­ond in the conference.

“Tennis isn’t like a lot of other sports in that it isn’t hard for us to bounce right back,” said Revall.

Ferris rebounded from the loss with a 5–4 vic­tory over Wayne State on Sunday. The Warriors were 5–0 and one of only two unbeaten teams in the GLIAC enter­ing the match. The Bulldogs won four of six sin­gles matches and one of the three dou­bles matches to claim the victory.

Ferris is 9–6 over­all and its 5–1 con­fer­ence record puts it in a second-place tie with Wayne State in the GLIAC stand­ings. FSU will play against Grand Valley State on April 14 in the final con­fer­ence con­test before the GLIAC Tournament.

Ferris won two matches last sea­son in the GLIAC Tournament against Findlay and Wayne State on its way to a third-place fin­ish. The Bulldogs last won the tour­na­ment in 1999 with a 5–4 vic­tory over Northwood. n