FRUITPORT – The Fruitport girls soccer team has been trending in the right direction lately, with two wins and a tie in the four games they played before Monday night.

But Monday brought the annual regular season battle with rival Spring Lake, and that’s a fight that the Trojans have not won in a long time.

Looking back all the way to the 2017 district tournament, Fruitport had lost nine straight games to the Lakers, who have had a very strong program for years.

That streak was extended to 10 games on Monday night when the Trojans fell to the Lakers 5-0 at home in another frustrating encounter with their archrivals.

Playing in the ultra-tough O-K Blue conference has been frustrating for Fruitport in general this spring. The Trojans are 3-6-1 overall, but five of those losses have been against league opponents.

To show how tough the O-K Blue is, the Trojans are just one of three teams in the eight-team league to be under the .500 mark overall.

“In my opinion, it’s one of the hardest in the state,” said Fruitport head coach Kyle Hall about the conference. “If not the toughest. To have success in this conference you have to put a full 80 minutes together, and we’ll get there.

“We’ve been talking about it. When you give up early goals, it’s hard to come back on teams. But our team is fully capable. Tonight came in spurts and we’ve been talking about needing to play a full 80 to be competitive.”

The lapses were evident on Monday when Spring Lake scored three first half goals all in a nine-minute stretch.

The first Laker goal, from Clare Hall, came at the 3:37 mark of the first half. The second, by Clara Saunders, came at 10:01 and the third, by Kyle Shelton was at 12:56.

Spring Lake outshot the Trojans 4-1 in the first half.

The Lakers had all three shots in the second half and scored on two of them, both from Aveya Patino.

The first came at the 19:28 mark and the second came just 1:29 later.

In total, Spring Lake finished with seven shots while Fruitport had one.

While the Trojans are disappointed with the loss, they’re aware of how likely they are to see Spring Lake again in the postseason, whether it be in the conference tournament or district play.

“Full credit to them,” Hall said about the Lakers. “Spring Lake is a great team and put a great game together. The chance of seeing Spring Lake again is very likely and we’ll be ready.”

Fruitport will next be in action on Wednesday when they travel to Grand Rapids West Catholic for another conference game.