MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. – The St. Olaf College women's tennis team was edged 5-4 by St. Catherine University in its first of back-to-back Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) matches on Friday evening at Baseline Tennis Center.

St. Olaf (9-4, 3-2 MIAC) held a 2-1 lead after doubles thanks to wins at the No. 2 and No. 3 spots, but St. Kate's (8-3, 4-2 MIAC) rallied by winning four of the six singles matches to claim the victory. The match was the sixth 5-4 scoreline of the season for the Oles, who won their first four 5-4 matches but have lost their last two.

The Oles got out to a lead in doubles behind wins from the pairings of sophomore Alexandra Berns / junior Fiona O'Flaherty and junior Jane Spading / senior Anna Secor, with both tandems improving to 3-1 in conference play. After St. Kate's got a win at the top spot, Spading and Secor won a tiebreaker 7-2 at No. 3 doubles before Berns and O'Flaherty closed out an 8-4 win at No. 2 doubles.

O'Flaherty bounced back from her first loss of the season for a 6-1, 6-0 victory at No. 4 singles to give St. Olaf a 3-2 lead after the Wildcats tied it at 2-2 with a straight-set win at No. 3 singles. O'Flaherty's win ran her record to 11-1 this season.

St. Kate's evened it up again with a super-tiebreaker victory at No. 2 singles and took a 4-3 lead with a straight-set win at No. 6 singles. With the Oles needing to win the final two matches on court, junior Sarah Clark came back from losing the first set to record a 5-7, 6-2, 1-0 (10-3) victory at No. 5 singles to shift the attention to the No. 1 singles match between Kelsey Dorr and junior Olha Zubarieva.

After Dorr, who is ranked No. 18 in the region by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA), won the first set in a tiebreaker, Zubarieva battled back in the second to send the match the distance. In the super tiebreaker, Dorr came out on top by the slimmest of margins to close out a 7-6 (8-6), 3-6, 1-0 (10-8) win and clinch the match for the Wildcats.

St. Olaf is right back in action with a match at the College of Saint Benedict on Saturday, April 13 at 11 a.m. The match will be played at the Chang Tennis Complex at Saint John's University before the men's match between the Oles and Johnnies.