WEXFORD, Pa. - The Slippery Rock University women's tennis team was narrowly edged in a tight 4-3 loss to Carnegie Mellon University Sunday at the Oxford Athletic Club in Wexford, Pennsylvania.
 
Slippery Rock (0-2) held a 3-1 lead, but Carnegie Mellon (2-0) was able to rally late with three straight singles victories to earn the comeback win. CMU entered the match as the fifth-ranked team in NCAA Division III.
 
SRU earned the first point of the match with consecutive doubles wins from the third and first flights as Lauren Fadden and Amy Varckette downed Megan Qiang and Victoria Tankova, 8-1, followed by Lois Page and Adriana Gonzalez Sanchez besting Bin Zheng and Lindy Cornwall, 8-5.
 
While it had no bearing on the team scoring, CMU's No. 2 doubles duo of Alex Iordache and Ola Wojciak were able to defeat Lindsey Fadden and Olivia Warner, 8-5.
 
Page proceeded to begin the singles portion of Sunday's match with a solid 6-4, 6-3 win in the first flight over Zheng to give The Rock a 2-0 advantage.
 
Abigail Khieu recorded CMU's first point of the evening from the sixth flight by overcoming a 6-3 loss to Varckette in the first set with back-to-back 6-0, 6-0 wins. SRU promptly answered back and once again pushed its advantage to two points at 3-1 when Gabi del Val del Toro earned an impressive 6-4, 1-6, 6-1 victory against Iordache in the third flight.
 
However, Carnegie Mellon was able to register victories in the final three singles matches to pull off the comeback victory.
 
In what was one of the top contests of the entire match, Cornwall squeaked by Gonzalez Sanchez in the second flight 6-1, 5-7, 7-5. The Tartans then closed out the bout by tallying two more close wins from the fourth and fifth flights when Wojciak bettered Warner 5-7, 6-3, 6-3 and Qiang edged Lauren Fadden 7-5, 6-7 (3-7), 6-2 for the fourth and deciding team point.
 
Slippery Rock now turns its attention to its first Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Western Division match of the season 1 p.m. March 27 against Indiana University (Pa.) for what figures to be a contest between two of the top teams in the Atlantic Region.
 
 

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