Winter weather proved no match for the Ichabod and Lady Blues tennis teams this weekend.

The teams took their competition indoors to face conference opponent Truman State. The women’s team swept Truman 6-0, keeping its conference record perfect at 2-0, and the men’s team earned its first conference win of the season with a 5-0 sweep against Truman.

Overall, Coach Dave Alden was pleased with the way the teams competed.

“I was proud of both teams,” said Allen. “We had good intensity and good focus. Truman is always more than competitive, and we did the little things right. We started points well, we served well, and we returned pretty well.”

Branden Joost, junior, added to the tennis program’s success last week when he was named the MIAA men’s tennis athlete of the week. Joost went 2-0 in No. 1 singles and 2-0 in No. 1 doubles the week before to receive the award.

“Branden works as hard as anybody, and he’s been playing really smart tennis,” said Alden. “He is the type of kid who will give you 100 percent all the time, and he never quits. There have been some pretty good MIAA tennis players that have won that award historically, so I’m proud of him.”

This week, the teams hope to continue their success as they face Blues will face Missouri Western, Nebraska-Omaha and Northwest Missouri State in what junior Trang Le Nguyen believes will be the most vital week of the season.”The next three games will all be conference games, so all three will be really important to win our conference,” said Le Nguyen. “We did a really good job against Truman State, so we need to play with that confidence next week.”The Ichabods will also face Nebraska-Omaha and Northwest Missouri State this week, and Alden knows that these are matches that can’t be taken lightly.”We’re capable of winning all of these matches, but we need to make sure that we play to our ability level,” he said.