Owatonna, MN - MLC men's tennis earned their third win of the season in an 8-1 victory over the Crown Polars on Thursday.

The Knights cruised in all facets of the match, sweeping the Polars in three doubles matches by a score of 8-2, 8-1, 8-2. 

"I thought that our doubles play to start out the match set a good tone," Paul Koelpin said of his team's performance. "We wanted to play solid, aggressive, confident tennis. Overall, I thought we did that today. We won lots of critical deuce points to maintain momentum and stay in control."

That momentum from doubles play carried over into singles, as MLC won five of the six matches, with the only loss coming in a third set tiebreak where Josiah Wordell fell short 7-5, 6-4, 5-10. Despite the loss for Wordell, the No. 1 player once again played a strong opponent and proved that he belongs at the top for MLC.

Meanwhile, Johannes Bourman was able to fend off Crown's No. 2 player with a 6-4, 7-5 win to give the freshman his second career singles victory.

Josiah Koelpin impressed in his 6-2, 6-1 win, while Elijah Schulz and Matthew Koelpin both claimed their matches 6-1, 6-0. The Knights picked up their eighth point on the day when Brian Friesenegger swept his No. 6 match 6-0, 6-0.

Overall, the Knights go to (3-9, 3-4) on the season and improve to 5-0 all-time against Crown in men's tennis. The two UMAC schools first played each other in 2018.

Up next for MLC is an 11 a.m. match on Saturday, April 22 against UW-Superior. The match was originally scheduled on the campus of MLC, but will be played at the Swanson Tennis Center at Gustavus.