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Columbia City and 18-time defending champion and host Warsaw advanced to the sectional championship tennis match with semifinal wins Thursday.
Columbia City won a tightly-contested decision over Tippecanoe Valley, while the Tigers won over conference rival Wawasee.
Warsaw 4, Wawasee 1
The Tigers, with 28 girls tennis sectional titles in the history of the program, positioned themselves for a 19th-straight title with a convincing win over the Warriors.
At No. 1 singles, Warsaw’s Alyssa Zellers dropped just two games, both in the second set, in her win over Kendra Doerr. Taylor Shoaf, after having to retire in last week’s Northern Lakes Conference tournament with an ankle injury, blanked Peyton Rookstool in 12 games.
The doubles matches were a little closer, with Raegan Merchant and Rachel Yeager beating Molly Jones and Kaitlin Graber 6-4, 6-2 at the No. 1 position. Maddie Ray and Amy Herendeen earned a 6-0, 6-3 win over Abby Morehead and Tate Cowan.
The one win for Wawasee came at No. 3 singles, where Elizabeth Kleopfer won 6-4. 6-1 over Rachel Boyle.
Warsaw head coach Rick Orban said his team was peaking at the right time of year, and felt like they were well-prepared for sectional play.
“Our kids really focused. For years now we’ve used the conference tournament as a measuring stick of how we’re playing and how our focus is. I was thrilled with how we played there,” he said.
“So the last couple of days in practice, I saw us getting better and better. The confidence was there. We’d played Wawasee twice at almost every position, so we were able to come up with strategies and pinpoint some weaknesses and habits they have.
“We had a plan going into this match, and we pretty much worked it to perfection.”
Wawasee interim head coach Lynette Jackson said it wasn’t so much the result as the score that surprised her.
“I thought it would be closer,” she said. “It’s tough going in to Warsaw because they have such a long-standing, good program. The girls know when they play Warsaw they’re always going to have a fight on their hands.
“They came up short tonight, and maybe it was more than they could handle, but I thought they ended the season really well. I’m satisfied and happy with how they did throughout the season, and it was a good build-up to the end, and a good launching place for next season.
Orban said the long string of consecutive sectional titles is also a strong motivator for the Tigers.
“I told the girls at practice yesterday, ‘we own this sectional. Somebody else has got to come in and hope they can win.’ And that’s a big difference in your mindset.”
Columbia City 3, Tippecanoe Valley 2
After splitting the first four matches, the Vikings were confident in their chances with their No. 1 doubles team of Makenna Bradley and Tiphanie Hodge having lost just one match this season coming in.
The duo dropped its first set 6-3 to the Eagles’ Haley Cearbaugh and Addison Bishop, then came back to win the second set 6-4 before dropping the final set by the same score.
“That would be who we want out there in that situation, but they were just off their game tonight,” said Viking head coach Andrew Luce. “They dropped thier first set, came back nicely in the second set, but let things get away from them when it was 3-3 in the third.”
Valley got straight-set wins from Hanna Engstrand, a 6-1, 6-1 winner over Madison Miner at No. 3 singles, and Kaitlin neese and Haley Baker won at No. 2 doubles 6-2, 6-1 over Grace Newton and Gracelynn Martinez.
Luce was thinking about the one that got away after the match.
“Columbia City has a good team,” he said. “It was there for us, and it would have been huge for us to have won, but it just wasn’t meant to be for us.”
