The women’s tennis team started off its conference play on the losing end, dropping its first two conference games to Akron and Buffalo.

The Huskies (14-4, 0-2 MAC) played two-time defending champions Akron (11-6, 1-0 MAC) for their first match of conference play and lost 7-0. The Huskies lost all three matches for doubles with the closest match being 8-5 with No. 2 pairing Haley Dekkinga/Stephanie McDonald losing to Angelina Jogasuria/Madison Cohen.

Nelle Youel, the Huskies’ No. 1 player in singles, couldn’t come with a victory, losing to Jogasuria in three sets: 7-6, 6-7 and 10-3. That ended her winning streak at 16.

“There is nothing to do about this loss but just help [the team] get back,” said coach Ryun Ferrell. “This is a very young team and things like this are just going to happen.”

Going into the Huskies’ second conference match against the Buffalo Bulls (10-0, 1-0 MAC), things didn’t get better: NIU lost 6-1. Buffalo won out in doubles, taking all three matches. The Bulls could have swept the Huskies with six wins in singles, but Mary Malkin defeated Laura Fernandez in four sets, 5-7, 6-3, 1-0 and 11-9, to give the Huskies their only win of the day.

“We looked sluggish out their, but I’m not trying to make excuses,” Ferrell said. “If we [had] done what [we’ve] normally been doing we could have won [against Buffalo] but Nelle and Haley both had an off day.”

With two games out the way and six more to go, the Huskies are on the outside looking in with a 0-2 conference record in the MAC. Ferrell and NIU can look at mistakes and learn from them.

“Looking at it, we haven’t had a bad week this season, but had it during our first matches for conference,” Ferrell said. “You are going to learn a lot from a loss. We didn’t know much about what needed to be done because we kept winning [this season].”

Looking at how the team preformed this weekend, Ferrell said the Huskies may try and switch up some of the doubles pairings to regain momentum.

Despite getting off to a poor start in conference, Ferrell believe the Huskies can still make up some ground in their upcoming matchups against Bowling Green State University (12-2) and Western Michigan (9-9).

“We’re not worrying about the losses,” Ferrell said. “We are not clicking on the panic button just yet we still have six more games to play.”