Game 1 Boxscore / Game 2 Boxscore

WINONA, Minn. —With four key games remaining in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference season — and the Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball team very much in the hunt for one of the four conference tournament berths — Thursday's nonconference doubleheader was a perfect way for the Cardinals to catch a little breather before heading down the MIAC's home stretch.

Unfortunately, while the day started nearly perfect, it didn't end quite that way.

SMU rode the pitching arm of Jenny Schipp (North St. Paul, Minn.) en route to a 4-0 victory in the opener, but struggled at the plate, and in the field — managing just one run on three hits, while committing three costly errors — as UW-Eau Claire rallied for a split with a 5-1 Game 2 win.

Schipp, fresh off her first collegiate perfect game in an 8-0 win over Augsburg on Wednesday, wasn't quite as perfect on Thursday — but she was close. Schipp held the Blugolds without a hit through 5 2/3 innings, before Molly Blakewell blooped a single in front of SMU centerfielder Amy Langer (Savage, Minn.) with two outs in the sixth.

The Cardinals gave Schipp all the run support she would need, scoring twice in the fourth inning on RBI's by Amy Edge (Mineral Point, Wis.) and Regan Cahanes (Woodbury, Minn.), then added single runs in the fifth and sixth. Mandy Tschernach (Rice Lake, Wis.) drove in the Cardinals' fifth-inning run with a two-out single up the middle, and Schipp helped her own cause with a one-out single to left in the sixth.

The Blugolds (19-14 overall) jumped on pitcher Hanni Lohmann (Lake Elmo, Minn.) for four runs — three of which were unearned — in the top of the second in Game 2. Mallory McKinney had the big blow for UW-Eau Claire, lacing a two-run home run to center field.

SMU (19-13 overall), which had its season-high seven-game winning streak snapped with the Game 2 loss, got one run back in the bottom of the second when Edge and Nikki Jung (Inver Grove Heights, Minn.) recorded back-to-back doubles to lead off the inning, but that was all the offense the Cardinals would muster. UW-Eau Claire added a single run in the fourth on a solo home run by Emilee Planert for the final four-run cushion.