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Sartell, Minn. – The Saint Benedict tennis team saw its strong start fade in a narrow 5-4 loss to St. Scholastica Tuesday night (Apr. 23), as the decision came down to the final match-up at No. 6 singles.
Trailing 4-2 with three matches left, the Blazers responded with thrilling three-set wins from
Ellie Black at No. 4 and
Beth Richmond at No. 5 to even the score.
Both players win their first set and lost their second, setting up the dramatics of the tie-breaking third set. For Black, she ran out to a 10-5 win and took the match, giving the Blazers their third win of the day, as well as her sixth win in the last eight matches.
For Richmond however, she really had to work, taking the third set all the way to a 12th point before getting the win at 12-10. When she did though, she brought the Blazers back to even a 4-4 on the day, while also breaking out of her own three-match losing skid in the process.
In the match-up at No. 6 singles, the Saints (18-5) came back out on top, as the Blazers'
Aly Dahlquist fell 6-2, 6-2, suffering just her third loss all season.
The Blazers (9-7) took a 2-1 lead after doubles play, first getting a win from
Victoria Beach and Black at No. 2, before
Jamie Hoffman and
Daley Rupar held off a comeback attempt for their win at No. 1.
Beach and Black, jumped ahead to a 5-2 lead early, and then held a 6-5 edge, before taking the final two games for the 8-5 win to start things off.
At No. 1 Hoffman and Rupar had to fight a little harder for their victory, as they kept going back at forth, holding leads of 6-5, 7-6, and 8-7. After the Saints evened the match at 8-8, the Blazers took the tiebreaker for the win and were in charge 2-0 in the team scoring early on.
The Saints closed doubles play with an 8-4 win, though, and they took the first four decisions in singles play to vault to a 4-2 advantage with three singles matches left.
The Blazers will put a wrap on the regular season with their final two matches this weekend, heading to Gustavus on Saturday (Apr. 27) for a 1 p.m., match-up, and will then hopefully get outside at home on Sunday (Apr. 28) when they host Saint Mary's in a noon match in the regular season finale.
