Coach Mark Voss said members of his Trinity Lutheran girls tennis team need to play more aggressively than they did Wednesday against New Washington.

“We just couldn’t get over that hump, as they say,” Voss said following the 5-0 loss to the Mustangs.

“The groundstrokes were pretty good,” he said. The movement was questionable. We had some trouble moving with lateral movement and forward movement both. That is something we need to see visually. It’s hard to do that in practice. It takes competition where you’re moving things constantly at a regular pace, instead of a drill here and a drill there.

“They need to open up their eyes and see a little more. We’ll try to get better at that as we go.”

Olivia Benter and Lauren Voss put up the most competitive match for the Cougars at No. 1 doubles, as they lost to Katie Harrod and Natalie Harrod 7-5, 6-4.

“We were close on a couple matches,” coach Voss said. “We were up 5-2 in one set and didn’t close the deal out. We lacked that killer instinct tonight. They need to work on the mental part of the game.

“They need to develop the attitude that we can win instead of taking whatever is given to us. We need to take control of the match and dictate it ourselves.”

Cougars Aurora Willman at No. 1 singles and Courtney Barker at No. 2 singles each won four games in their first sets but couldn’t keep up the pace and dropped straight set matches.

Willman lost to Olivia Greabe 6-4, 6-2, while Barker fell to Reggan Zimmerman 6-4, 6-3.

Trinity’s No. 2 doubles team of Leah Stuckwisch and Kelly Adams won three games in their match, while Abby Schult won only one game in the second set of her match.

Voss said the Cougars’ hard work serving in practice paid off at several positions.

“I’ve seen some significant improvement from a lot of the younger girls with the serving, and that’s a plus. We’ve really been working hard on that, so I’m pretty pleased with that.

“I would like to see some of the upperclassmen gain a little more speed and power in theirs. That will come. We’re still young in the season.”

The Cougars (1-3) will travel to Waldron today.