Photo by Jake McNeill: Marshall singles No. 2 player Kathryn Coudron backhands a shot during a Big South Conference volleyball match against Waseca’s Ava Miller on Thursday at Marshall High School.

MARSHALL — A handful of back-and-forth sets breaking the wrong way left the Marshall girls tennis team just shy of a win against Waseca in Big South Conference play on Thursday. The Bluejays claimed two of the day’s three three-set matches, handing the Tigers a 5-2 loss.

The Tigers graduated a handful of key contributors after last season, leaving them with a younger roster this year, but head coach Alex Cleppe said he’s been pleased with how the team’s been performing thus far.

“We’ve been growing as the season’s gone on and I’ve been happy that a lot of our matches haven’t been so one-sided,” Cleppe said, adding that the team’s been right in most of its matches aside from 7-0 losses to St. Peter and Blue Earth. “Today was a 2-5 [final score] with three three-set matches going on at the same time, so we’ve been in good, competitive matches. My hope here is that as we get closer to the end, that we can start turning some of these in our favor.”

Kyra Bailey picked up Marshall’s lone win in the matches that went the distance, overcoming a second-set lull for a win over Pearl Moore in singles No. 2. Bailey claimed the first set 6-4 before dropping the second 2-6, but bounced back with a 6-4 win in the third set.

Brooklyn Mauch and Kathryn Coudron each won their first set 6-4, with Mauch’s win coming against Vivian Mader in singles No. 1 and Coudron’s coming against Ava Miller in singles No. 2. Yet, the Bluejays bounced back to steal the sets, with Mader taking the next two sets 6-2, 6-2 against Mauch and Miller taking hers 6-4, 6-2 against Coudron.

Most of the points in Mauch’s match came down to rallies of 20-to-30 shots, Cleppe said, adding that it was one of those matches where any individual shot could tilt the match either way.

“One of the things I try to get the girls to understand is you’ve got to compete every point. Every point has to be, in your mind, the last point you’re playing,” Cleppe said. “So you’re getting after it every single time, and if we do that, we’ll continue to get better… Tennis is one of the few sports where you can actually win more points than your opponent and still lose the match, so it’s strange in that regard, but I’m seeing our team get better today.”

Julia Pafko and Emry Jans earned Marshall’s lone doubles point of the match, defeating Madison Rasche and Chloe Hagen 6-3, 6-3 in doubles No. 3.

In doubles No. 1, Emry Weller and Jazilyn Steinberg-Jones fell 6-4, 6-3 to Paige DuFault and Maddy Benson, while Peyton and Eme DeMuth lost 6-2, 6-2 to Hannah Rugger and Anna Benson.

Marshall falls to 3-9 overall and 1-3 in conference on the season with the loss, and next takes on Montevideo on the road on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. Montevideo is a traditionally strong team, Cleppe said, adding that the team will look to grow and improve in practice over the coming days to put itself in position to compete on Tuesday and set the tone for itself as it heads into sections in a few weeks.