SYRACUSE – Wawasee’s girls tennis team knows there’s just no substitute for experience. That lesson was reinforced in a lopsided 4-1 loss to visiting Concord Tuesday afternoon. The Lady Warriors are playing mostly underclassmen, and were short their regular No. 1 singles player for the Northern Lakes Conference matchup with the Lady Minutemen. In the four matches Concord won, Wawasee didn’t win a game. The lone Wawasee win came at No. 1 doubles, where Kabrea Rostochak and Kendra Doerr came back from dropping the first set to win a third-set tiebreaker. “We had to jostle the lineup; our singles are playing up. We knew it was going to be tough. Concord really put a thumpin’ on us last year,” Wawasee coach Shane Staley said. “We were competitive at No. 1 doubles, but since we were short-handed this match doesn’t do justice to what we wanted to do today.” Staley said he sees forward movement in the work in progress that is the Wawasee program currently. “We’re not very deep yet. It’s a young program. We have two sophomores and a freshman as our top three singles players,” he said. “In the last couple of matches I’ve seen signs that they’re starting to win some critical points, some of those 30-30 points to go up 40-30, or hold their serves. “I’m pretty positive, even though we’ve run in to a little skid here. They’ve been showing signs of being a good team and learning the right way. I’m excited about what’s to come.” Wawasee will travel to play a non-conference match with Manchester on Thursday.
