NORTH JACKSON — It was a tough week for the Jackson-Milton Blue Jays volleyball team.

They had lost three straight and five of their last six after starting off the year 5-2.

It looked like the tough times were going to continue Monday night when the Blue Jays fell behind early in the first set — only to climb back and start an avalanche of bad play from the Lordstown Red Devils as Jackson-Milton completed a 3-0 sweep.

“It’s a nice way to start off after a couple of difficult losses,” Jackson-Milton coach Sue Prozy said. “It’s a nice way to open the week and set our sights on this week’s work.”

Grace McDevitt led Jackson-Milton (7-7) with 16 points and 10 kills. Rena Costello added 10 kills as well, and Bailey Estes had 22 assists.

Lordstown (5-9) opened the first set with a 9-4 lead and looked poised to start an ugly trend that the Blue Jays experienced last week. Prozy called a timeout to regroup her team.

The Red Devils got the first point after the timeout to make it 10-4, but then everything went south as the Blue Jays rattled off the next five points to make it 10-9.

“We just talked about how we were giving them a lot of points by our mistakes,” Prozy said. “We needed to clean up our mistakes. We just needed to keep the ball in play basically and attack the ball.”

That play continued when Jackson-Milton tied it up at 11-all scored 14 of the next 15 points to win the first set 25-12.

“I think it was definitely a team effort,” Prozy said. “We had some great saves. We had two really good saves and that was multiple players at the same time. Everybody just started hitting. We literally hit five balls out of play in the first set — those first nine points. That hurt us.”

The situation didn’t get any better for the Red Devils in the next set after it was 4-3. Jackson-Milton outscored the Red Devil 14-3 to make it 18-6 and went on to win the second set 25-10.

Ava Spano and Alexandra Drewek led Lordstown with six and five kills, respectfully. Emily Johnson and Emily Knox each had six assists apiece.

The Red Devils had 35 errors as a team with 22 coming on their digs when they struggled to return serves on a consistent basis.

In the third set, Lordstown built a 3-0 lead, but the Blue Jays responded with 11 straight points. The Red Devils got it as close as 17-10, but Jackson-Milton completed the sweep with a score of 25-14.

“We have the potential to beat anyone in our league,” Prozy said. “We beat Western Reserve the first time, who is currently leading our league. We lost to them the other night in four sets, but they were four tough sets. It just depends, if we come to play, we can be a team that upsets someone. We can be scary, but we have to have all the gears clicking.”