Varon wins regional singles title, teams with Karcher for doubles crown

Luisa Varon is going to the nationals.

And the Eastern Florida State College sophomore is bringing a friend.

Talk about a big day for the Titans.

Varon won the ITA Florida Regional Championships singles title with a hard-fought 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-3 victory over top-seeded Maria Medina of State College of Florida.

She then teamed with EFSC freshman Josephine Karcher to win the doubles championship and advance to the nationals, which will be held Oct. 13-16 in Surprise, Arizona.

It's the second straight trip to the nationals for Varon, who reached the semifinals in both singles and doubles last season while playing for Seminole (OK) State College.

However, even she admitted getting to the nationals this time around was a lot tougher.

For one thing, the ITA Florida Regionals featured five of the top 10 teams in the country as well as some of the top players. Varon, who was seeded third in this tournament, beat No. 2 seed Emily Chang of ASA Miami in the semifinals and then took out Medina, who is the top-ranked returning player in the nation.

"It was awesome," Varon said. "I feel so good now. I feel like I'm playing really well."

Winning the Flight 1 championship match at the Panther Invitational last week gave Varon some confidence heading into the ITA Florida Regional. Some perfectly executed strategy of mixing up not just her shots, but the pace of those shots, helped her get past Medina.

"She always tries to hit the ball hard," Varon said of Medina. "The only thing I did was try to change the game. Sometimes, I hit it hard. Sometimes, I hit it high. Sometimes, I went to the net and volleyed. Sometimes, I (hit a drop) shot.

"I changed a lot of the game so she got confused. That's why I got her."

After winning the first set in a close tiebreaker, Varon seemed to lose her momentum as Medina came back to win the second set. However, she was able to recover in the third, winning the final three games to cement the match.

Medina was penalized several times for improper line calls, including on match point. But it was clearly a match that belonged to Varon.

"I told her in the third-set changeover that if I could have any player on court going into a third set in the Florida region championship, it would be her," Titans women's tennis coach Jerry Thor said. "She proved me right. She came out, she was tough from the start, stayed focused and kind of had that inner confidence.

"She didn't have an ego. She had confidence. She played like a champion."

In the doubles tournament, the fourth-seeded team of Varon and Karcher – who were just teamed together this week – proved to be quite a winning pair as well.

After trailing 3-1 and 5-3, the pair came back to beat No. 2 seed Anita Detlava and Kokoro Chishaki of St. Petersburg College 8-3 in the semifinals. That put them into the championship match against Medina and Julia Sergheeva, but the pair defaulted.

"It was an amazing (semifinal) match," Karcher said. "I'm so happy that we won and now we're going to nationals. That was the dream. We said at the beginning, 'OK, we're going to win the tournament.'"

Although they had not played together before, Varon and Karcher seemed to be a very well-matched pair who quickly adapted to each other's style of play and will have a chance to go far at the nationals.

"It's a new friend, so I have to get her confidence because she was kind of nervous," Varon said. "It's her first regionals. I was nervous, but I know how it feels because I played last year. That's why she was so happy to win doubles in regionals. Now she's going to Arizona with me. I'm not going alone."

Thor was also impressed with the way his new doubles team was able to become a cohesive team so quickly.

"Luisa and Josie really communicated well," Thor said. "They played with energy. They played with enthusiasm. And they looked like they had a lot of fun.

"That's always great to see as a coach. You want your players to have a great time out there competing. At the end of the day, you want them to have great memories."

This will be a tournament to remember for the Titans, that is for sure.

They had six players win their first-round matches and had two players (Varon and Lea Stormer) advance to the singles semifinals, not to mention their success in doubles.

That was better than two-time defending national champion ASA Miami, which saw all of its players eliminated on Saturday.

"It's unbelievable," Thor said of his team's big weekend. "We have a lot of brand new players who have come in and acted like veterans. I couldn't be more grateful to them for buying into the philosophy that we have here where we want to compete for regional and national championships.

"They've come out here and shown that that's what they want to do, and they can do it. I'm really excited to see Luisa and Josie play on the national stage. … We'll have them prepared to make a run at a couple of national championships."