The Warsaw and Penn girls tennis teams met earlier this season, with the Lady Tigers picking up a 3-2 win. The two sides met again on Tuesday night on a much bigger stage, the IHSAA girls tennis regional semifinal at NorthWood. The final score was 3-2 once again, but this time the Lady Kingsmen were able to pull off the victory and advance.
“These girls had a remarkable season and they should leave the courts with their heads held high tonight,” Warsaw head coach Stacy Lind said after the match. “Everyone here is proud of them, and they should be.”
The first match to conclude was the battle between the No. 2 doubles teams, in which Penn took an early 1-0 lead in the match as Scarlett Biever and Jaanavy Kaushik were able to defeat Warsaw’s Whitney Dawson and Lucy Ray in three sets. The Lady Kingsmen took the first set 6-1 before Dawson and Ray bounced back nicely to tie things up with a 6-3 victory. The all-important third set was handled by Penn, as Biever and Kaushik won 6-2 to put their team on the scoreboard.
Not long afterwards, The hard-fought battle between No. 1s Addie Lind of Warsaw and Aileen Hu of Penn came to an end. Despite only going two sets, the match was a delight to watch, with each point scored coming off of a battle. After going neck-and-neck through the beginning of the first set, Lind was able to find some separation to win the first set 6-3. Hu bounced back nicely in the second set, frustrating Lind on her way to going up 5-4. But the Lady Tiger junior bounced back nicely, winning the next three games to take the second set and the match with a 7-5 win. To improve to 23-0 this spring.
“She has grown so much this season and in her career,” Lind said. “She’s so laser focused and she has goals that she wants to meet that she is knocking down one at a time.”
Warsaw jumped out in front not long afterwards, as the No. 1 duo of Claire Reichenbach and Clara Porter won their match in three sets, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 over Penn’s Maren Woelfer and Clarissa Schmitt. The duo was in sync for the entirety of the victory, perfectly playing off of each other to keep the pressure on the Lady Kingsmen and winning the final two sets to clinch the match with relative ease.

    Warsaw tennis coach Stacy Lind (left) pumps up her No. 1 duos team of Clara Porter (center) and Claire Reichenbach (right).

“They fought today. They wanted to win this match very badly and they did just that. It was a terrific match,” Lind said.
The next match to finish up tied things up once again, as Penn’s No. 2 Anna Yoon defeated Abby Nicholas 4-6, 6-3, 1-6. Nicholas responded well in the second set after a tough first one, getting her serve going and using her lightning rod of a strike to put Yoon on the ropes. After a short break, Yoon was able to figure out her opponent and get by in the final set.
That brough things to No. 3 singles, which would decide the match for both sides. Warsaw’s Emma VanPuffelen and Penn’s Sam Pischalko were both unable to find much separation at all in the match, staying within one or two sets of each other for the entirety of it. Pischalko won the first set 7-5 before coming back to win the second 6-4 to clinch the match for Penn and send the Lady Kingsmen to the regional final.
The season is not over for Warsaw however, as Lind and the pairing of Reichenbach and Porter will advance in the individual state tournament as undefeated No. 1s.