SYRACUSE – To say Wawasee’s girls tennis team has been snakebitten this season would almost seem to add venom to the wound. It’s been a painful season to say the least.

Wawasee hosted Elkhart Memorial Tuesday afternoon and hung around for a while, but the patch and tape group from Syracuse couldn’t keep pace with Memorial in a 5-0 result in Northern Lakes Conference tennis.

The Lady Warriors, which are down five varsity players from the start of the season for various reasons, played with its seventh different lineup in nine matches. Wawasee head coach Chris Winters, looking for some consistency in any form, kept nearly the same lineup from Monday’s win at West Noble. Against a very powerful Memorial team, however, it didn’t matter what lineup went out there.

Perhaps the most impressive of the court wins came on the one singles court, where Krystal Grubb looked nearly flawless in a 6-0, 6-2 win over Katy Ashpole. Grubb wasn’t affected by the constant swirling wind, in fact, looked to use it to her advantage on several well-placed drop shots as well as her powerful serve.

Ashpole, honored prior to the match with classmate Marte Tverra as the program’s seniors, could only tap her racquet time after time as Grubb painted corners and baseline smashes.

“Katy has taken a couple of the NLC schools to three sets,” Winters said of the Warsaw and Northridge matches earlier in the season. “This girl (Grubb) was just another level up. She was very good. Katy has learned quite a bit this season and has shown a lot more confidence in conference matches.”

Ashpole and No. 2 singles teammate Jada Antonides have been the only two players to play in the same position all season, but Antonides had no answer for Corinn Whitaker in a love and love match that lasted less than 45 minutes.

Memorial’s doubles teams were up to the task. Taelor Grose and Haley Stouder continued to improve as a veteran doubles team, smashing past Addison Ayres and Jazlyn Gehlhausen love and love on the one doubles court. Ayres and Gehlhausen have only played three matches together this season.

At two doubles, Maggie Dickerson and Mady Robison had little trouble closing out Tverra and Charity Parker 6-1, 6-0. Tverra, in her first season of tennis as an exchange student from Norway, played her first varsity match Tuesday after putting in JV work this season.

“It’s been really hard, just hard,” said a frustrated Winters. “Every day is evolving. The girls are hanging in there and have had great attitudes throughout, which has really helped me. I just have to keep encouraging them to get better. But I’m not going to lie, this has been a really tough season losing the number of players that we have.”

With the win, Memorial moved to 8-0 on the season and are 4-0 in the NLC.

Elkhart Memorial swept all six of the JV courts to post a clean slate for the day.

Wawasee (2-7 overall, 0-5 NLC) will return to the home courts Thursday welcoming in NorthWood.