EDMOND, Okla. – No. 17 ranked women's tennis snuck by Northwest Missouri, 4-3, in the semifinal round of the MIAA Championship Tournament on Saturday evening to move on to the MIAA Championship. The Ichabods will face No. 1 seed/No. 4 nationally ranked Central Oklahoma in the MIAA Championship on Saturday at 2 p.m. at Edmond Center Court.
 
Playing to clinch, Washburn won the doubles point as they took wins at the No. 2 and 3 spots. Svea Crohn and Maria Soler Valverde started things off with a 6-3 victory from the No. 3 doubles court, then the duo of Maja Jung and Kinsey Fields repeated that with a 6-3 win of their own from the middle spot.
 
The Ichabods continued to roll through the Bearcats, winning the first two singles points to take a commanding 3-0 lead. Soler Valverde won the first doubles point with a 6-2, 6-1 from No. 3, the Jung won her match by set scores of 7-5, 6-2 at the fourth spot. After the Bearcats took three points from the No. 5, 1, and 2 spots in order to tie it up at 3-3, the winning point came down to Cadence Lynn at the bottom of the lineup.
 
Lynn won the first set by 6-4, but her Bearcats opponent Victoria Caster won the second set by 6-4. Going into the third set, Caster went up 4-1 quickly but Lynn battled back and eventually the set was tied at 6 to go into a tiebreaker for the seventh point. Lynn continued to fight back with resilience to win the tiebreaker 7-4 and take the third set by 7-6, clinching the 4-3 win for Washburn over Northwest Missouri.
 
No. 2 seed Washburn will go head-to-head with the No. 1 seed Central Oklahoma on Saturday at 2 p.m. at Edmond Center Court in Edmond, Okla. The Ichabods are currently in contention for a NCAA regional spot, which a press release will be released announcing the selections on Monday at 7:30 p.m. on NCAA.com.