WEST LAFAYETTE − Sophia Gray and Gabrielle Schultheiss developed a chemistry as doubles partners that helped Harrison tennis win a regional championship last season.
A year later, the duo was split, with Gray playing No. 2 singles for the Raiders.
As first-year head coach, Landon Waeltz figured out each player’s strengths and weaknesses. He found the best lineup revolved around reuniting Gray and Schultheiss as Harrison’s No. 1 doubles tandem.
“About halfway through the year, we switched who I was playing doubles with and I think that kind of made a big difference because me and Sophia played doubles together last year and we won sectionals and regionals,” Schultheiss said. “We work really well together. We communicate together and it works really well.”
Hard to argue with the results.
The Raiders are right back where they were a year ago, avenging a regular-season loss to Benton Central in last week’s sectional, then defeating rival McCutcheon 3-2 in Tuesday’s regional semifinal and repeating as regional champions with a 4-1 win over Eastern on Wednesday.
“This was something where, going into it, we went into tryouts, and I knew zero names of the players,” Waeltz said.
As the season went on, more familiarity arose, and now there’s a fluid dialect between coaches and players, who credit Waeltz’s leadership with helping them return to semistate.
Waeltz knew he inherited a talented roster, but it was the way they took to a coaching change that showed him why the Raiders could be successful. They bought into Waeltz, a 2023 McCutcheon graduate, and treated him with the respect of a head coach, even given his relatively young age for leading one of the state’s top tennis programs.
A 17-3 record, the lone blemishes to Benton Central, Fort Wayne Dwenger, and Zionsville, are the results of respect being returned from head coach to players.
“Sometimes I get in my head, but he’s always there,” No. 1 singles player Elliot Flanery said. “It helps me to really stay focused and do what I need to do in my match.”
On Wednesday, Flanery put the first point on the board with a 6-1, 6-0 victory. Gray and Schultheiss added a victory at No. 1 doubles and Kate Wellborn put the closing touches on a regional title with a victory at No. 3 singles. For good measure, Audrey Ross and Anshi Patel were victorious at No. 2 doubles.
Now, after a coaching change, followed by a midseason lineup change, Harrison is facing eighth-ranked Munster at Saturday’s Culver Academies Semistate.
“We’ve played a lot of good teams, but we haven’t played a team like Munster yet, so it will be exciting to play some good competition and see what happens,” Flanery said.
Sam King covers sports for the Journal & Courier. Email him at sking@jconline.com and follow him on X and Instagram @samueltking.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Harrison tennis finds winning formula, repeats as regional champion
Reporting by Sam King, Lafayette Journal & Courier / Lafayette Journal & Courier
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