Ottawa seniors Zulee Moreland and Yaquelin Hernandez-Solis played on separate doubles teams as sophomores, as the top two singles players last season, but this fall they’ve now pooled their collective talents as the Pirates No. 1 doubles team.

The Pirates top duo picked up a 6-1, 7-5 victory over La Salle-Peru juniors Addi Piecha and April Pescetto in the Henderson-Guenther Tennis Facility at Ottawa High School to help their team to a 4-1 Interstate 8 Conference triumph over the rival Cavaliers on Tuesday.

Ottawa improved to 8-0 overall and 3-0 in league play.

“I was playing at singles at the beginning of this season, but I had a bit of a tweak in my groundstoke,” said Moreland, the reigning Times Girls Tennis Player of the Year. “I was very inconsistent and having trouble keeping the ball inbounds. (Ottawa) coach (Steve) Johnson switched me to doubles with Yaquelin and it’s helped me kind of get back on track.

“I thought we played pretty well today. We struggled at times, but I think we did a good job of letting the bad points go and moved on to the next one. I feel like that is a strength we both have.”

Hernandez-Solis felt the key to the win was keeping the ball in play.

“I feel like we were very consistent with our volleys today,” Hernandez-Solis said. “The rest of our game was OK, but not really where we both would have like them to be.

“I love Zulee so much, she’s one of my favorite people on the earth on and off the court. I feel like our skill levels are very close, we work well together, and we both have had some of the same difficulties with tennis. We understand what each other is going through.”

For the L-P top doubles squad, while the first set was a struggle, they were able to bounce back.

“Our first set today was really bad; we just weren’t aggressive,” Pescetto said. “We just didn’t come out ready to play and it seemed like we both were a step slow to every ball we went for. I can’t even tell you why we came out like we did, but we did come back and play a better second set.

“Overall, I thought we did well in serving and play at the net today. I also think we both know we still have to keep working on being better at the baseline.”

Piecha said the two sets were as different than night and day.

“We came out firing in the second set,” Piecha said. “We were doing all the things we weren’t doing in the first set. We talked things over between sets and just came out with a better mindset. I feel like we had a lot of really good shots and plays but came up short in a tiebreaker.

“Looking back, I think we both had shots we’d like to have back. I think we are both a little disappointed how we started, but we both talked about taking how we played in the second set today into our next match.”

The other doubles match in the dual saw the No. 2 doubles team of Ottawa’s Brooklyn Byone/Rylee Harsted comeback for a 5-7, 6-4, 6-4 win over L-P’s Meredith Politsch/Julia Garcia, while the Pirates’ No. 3 doubles team of Caitlyn Trettenero/Gracie Polancic earned a 6-3, 6-0 triumph over the Cavs Alia Nowakowski/Abby Smudzinski.

Ottawa’s No. 1 singles player Savannah Frederickson swung to a 7-6 (2), 6-2 victory over La Salle-Peru’s Dagny Greer, while at No. 2, L-P’s Adelyn Leone defeated Ottawa’s Reese Purcell, 6-1, 6-3.

Ottawa will next be at the Bloomington Gold Invitational on Friday and Saturday. L-P is off until next Tuesday when it hosts Rochelle in an I-8 match.