Sports Midweek Roundup: Tennis, Vball, Soccer; Fremont, Grant, Hespo + WMC

TENNIS

Tigers sweep past Spartans with an eye on the Regionals
The Tigers finished off the regular season with a win vs Sparta Tuesday.  The players swept all the flights winning 8-0. The team will be competing at North Point Christian Thursday in Regionals.  Karlton Zerlaut will lead the team as the number 1 seed at #1 singles. All the doubles are seeded and the boys will look to advance to next week's state finals at Hope College. 

Pack falls to Cards; DeLong still undefeated
Fremont Boys Tennis lost a close match to Big Rapids on a beautiful, Tuesday afternoon. Though the score was 1-7, singles players Blake Boerger and Parker Vandenberg and doubles team Jake DeLong/Jake Crowley fought for every point before losing in the 3rd set. 
#4 Singles player, Joey DeLong, won 6-1, 6-2 and remains undefeated at #4 singles.

Grant finishes a close second; Zerlaut aces 3rd top player honors
The Tigers played some of their best tennis Saturday at the conference tournament.  The team put 5 of the 8 flights into the championship matches, winning 4. First year player, Eli Bradley at 4 singles won his first match on the day, then gave the #1 seed a battle in a competitive loss, and then finished the day beating Ludington 6-3 7-5.   Kyle Bay and Isaac Higgins got the guys going in the first final of the day beating #1 seeded Ludington 6-1 6-2, avenging an early season 3 set loss. Next was the 3 doubles championship, where Trent Patton and Diego Krepps started out down a couple games, but came back to win 6-4 6-2 over Ludington.  Grant's senior captain Dustin Slachter and partner Payton Swinehart beat North Muskegon 3 & 4 at the 2 doubles championship flight. Carter Chase, another senior and team captain, along with Jed VanderWeide squared off against Ludington at the final of #1 doubles. The Tigers played well, but couldn't overcome some great serving and net play by the top seed.  Kalrton Zerlaut reached the finals of #1 singles for the 3rd straight year and was the last match playing. Zerlaut was ahead 4-3 on serve in the third set when rain stopped play on Saturday. The 2 competitors returned to Whitehall to finish the match in the late afternoon on Monday. Zerlaut put the pressure on with some good returns to go up a break and then closed out the championship with 4 first serves to become the top player in the tournament for the third consecutive year.  TheTIgers finished with 34 points, 3 points behind #8 state ranked Ludington.  

VBALL

Pack goes 5 to finally top Tigers: Pafford knocks down 20 kills.
Fremont Packer Volleyball ended the victory drought with a 3-1 win over Grant last night. The scores were 25-23, 24-26, 25-18, and 25-19.
Coach VanBoven:
 It has been a long time since the Packers won against Grant. This game has been on our radar all year. The girls were ready to battle and showed up big. Leading the Pack in kills was Rhi Pafford with 20 kills and Natalie Jamieson with 12 kills. Defensively Kennedy Christoffersen had 22 digs, Carle Bruggema had 12 digs, Kaitlynn Bennett and Rhi Pafford each had 11 digs, and Calla Miller 9. Kaitlynn Bennett led the team in service points with 13 points and 4 aces. Carle Bruggema handled the ball well and led with 33 assists. 
I am very proud of the senior leadership from this game. During one of the timeouts the seniors stepped up and said "Tonight we are playing not only for ourselves, but for those FPV'ers that came before us and after us." 
As an alumni of this program and now coach, I am so proud of this group of athlete's determination. This win was a full team effort including those in the stands cheering the girls on. 
Tuesday October 15th is our final home game of the season at 7pm against Tri-County. You won't want to miss the opportunity to watch these girls go to battle. 
With this win FPV is 4-1 in conference and 13-11-1 overall. 

Hesperia fights off Cloud; Romero, Bayle lead in kills 
The Lady Panthers beat the White Cloud Indians in 4 tonight at home with the scores 25-20, 13-25,25-22, and 25-22. Rachel Romero led the Panthers with 13 kills, Emily Bayle had 11 kills, Isabelle Rumsey and Delaney Yates each added 8 and 7 kills respectively.  Rumsey had 1 block on the night. At the serving line, Romero had 3 aces and Rumsey 2 aces. Defensively, Bayle had 15 digs, Romero 10, and Aria Thomas 9 digs. Kyra Sayer had 21 assists and Thomas 18 assists for the panthers. Tonight's conference win, improves the Panther's record to 6-1 in conference play and 26-8-1 overall.  

SOCCER

The West Michigan Christian Warriors traveled to Muskegon Catholic Tuesday and returned with an 8-0 win and the Lakes 8 Conference championship.
WMC finishes the regular season with an overall record of 11-2-3 and 6-0-2 in conference play.
“With the win we move into districts and, hopefully, deep into the tournament,” WMC coach David Hulings said.  “The team continues to get better. We knew we would probably be able to dominate MCC tonight, but I liked what we learned.
​“In district games we are going to get teams that play like MCC and we need to be able to solve the puzzle.  We have been talking about using the first part of the game to breakdown an opponent. I thought we did a great job of creating an attack based upon what the other team gives us."