WINONA, Minn. — For the Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball team, Saturday's opening game against league-leading Hamline looked eerily similar to Thursday's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader against St. Catherine.
 
After managing just four hits in being shut out twice by the Wildcats, 2-0 and 6-0, the Cardinals were scoreless—and hitless—through the first four innings against the Pipers.
 
The Cardinals finally got on the board in the fifth—thanks to a pair of doubles—and added the game-winning run on a Brittney Birkhauser (Wisconsin Rapids, Wis.) RBI single in the sixth in dealing the Pipers a 2-1 Game 1 setback.
 
Saint Mary's offense continued to roll in the nightcap, erupting for five runs on nine hits.
 
Unfortunately for the Cardinals, Hamline scored more runs and had nearly as many hits in the sixth inning alone—scoring eight runs on eight hits en route to a 13-5 victory and a split in the conference twinbill.
 
The Cardinals broke a scoreless deadlock in the fifth inning in Game 1, as Kali Aldrich (Rochester, Minn.) and Alex Raske (Chicago, Ill.) delivered back-to-back two-out doubles to give Saint Mary's a 1-0 advantage.
 
The Pipers answered with a single run in the top of the sixth, but Saint Mary's put together three hits—one-out singles by Kathi Opsahl (Elk River, Minn.) and Mariah Harper, and a run-scoring single by Birkhauser—in the bottom of the inning to take the lead for good.
 
Saint Mary's finished with five hits in Game 1—from five different players—while Ashley Betzold (Farmington, Minn.) tossed a complete-game four-hitter to collect the pitching win.
 
The two teams traded first-inning runs in the nightcap, but Hamline added three runs in the top of the third to take a 4-1 advantage. The Cardinals answered with a pair of two-run innings—the first on an Opsahl two-run home run in the third and the second on a Stanzy Snyder (Johnston, Iowa) two-run single in the fourth—to give Saint Mary's a 5-4 advantage.
 
Hamline again knotted things up with a solo run in the fifth, before icing the victory with its eight-run explosion in the sixth.
 
Snyder finished 3-for-3 with a pair of RBIs in Game 2, while Raske was 2-for-4 with three runs scored.
 
The Cardinals (8-10 MIAC, 14-16 overall) are back in action on Tuesday, hosting UW-River Falls in a 3 p.m. nonconference doubleheader. Saint Mary's nonconference twinbill against Luther, originally scheduled for Sunday, has been postponed to a date to be determined.