Marquette’s Trevor Lewis rushes the net to return a shot during his No. 1 doubles match against Gladstone on Wednesday at Marquette Senior High School. (Photo courtesy Shannon Stieg)

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MARQUETTE — It’s not easy playing tennis in the cold, but the Marquette boys team made it look that way Wednesday afternoon on its home courts.

The Redmen took down Gladstone 7-1 quickly as they swept all four of the doubles matches.

“It was a good day,” Marquette head coach Charlie Drury said. “It was cold, but I think it was better than what we had yesterday with the wind.

“The team we have this year, they work hard and they get along really well with each other. We’re seeing improvement in every match and that’s what we’re looking for.”

In singles action, Alec Olivier (No. 1) and Beau Belkowski (No. 3) cruised to victories, while Axel Seitz earned a win by forfeit at No. 4 for the Redmen (3-0).

Olivier continues to pick up win after win and Drury praised his ace heavily.

“Alec has done great this year,” he said. “His leadership has just been phenomenal and I think he’s having more fun. His game has stepped up another notch, so he just needs to keep working and doing the right things.”

Over on the doubles side, things went smoothly for the Redmen as the only reasonably close match came at No. 2. But the tandem of Jack Franchino and Connor Johnson still came out with a two-set victory.

Gladstone’s lone victory came at No. 2 singles where Danny Pederson defeated Braden Golisek 6-4, 6-1.

“Danny played a really good match and looked solid,” Braves head coach Dan Williams said. “I also thought our No. 2 doubles (Carter Hedman and Ethan Dawson) are really coming along. They’d been struggling a little bit and they started playing really well together today as a team, so I was very happy with that.

“It’s still early though. We’ve been struggling a little bit with our doubles and we have a lot of new players. We have six freshmen on the team that haven’t played a lot of tennis for us. We’ve just been plugging along and learning and trying to improve every match. Which we have and it showed today.”

On Friday, Marquette plays at Menominee while Gladstone hosts Kingsford.

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.