
PLYMOUTH – The Warsaw girls soccer program has cornered the market on sectional championships of late.
It was only fitting that Saturday night a corner kick opportunity enabled the Tigers to continue that successful trend.
Danielle Hutcherson converted a perfect corner kick ball off the foot of Brooklyn Jackson to lift Warsaw past NorthWood 1-0 in the rain-soaked title tilt of the Class 2-A Plymouth Sectional.
Hutcherson’s terrific header goal with 14:15 to play in the match gave the Tigers their fourth straight sectional championship.
Warsaw (11-3-2) advances to play No. 14 Northridge (15-1-2) Wednesday at 7:15 p.m. in the second semifinal game of the Goshen Regional. The 5:30 p.m. opener Wednesday pits Penn (14-4-1) versus No. 10 South Bend St. Joseph (16-2-1).
The Wednesday winners return to Goshen to play for the regional title on Oct. 19 at 7 p.m. and a spot in the South Bend St. Joseph Semistate Oct. 26.
St. Joseph defeated Warsaw 3-1 in the regional title match at Goshen in 2012.
Warsaw lost 3-0 to Northern Lakes Conference foe Northridge during the regular season.

“Me and Brooklyn have a great connection on those plays,” said hero Hutcherson of her game winner. “I was at the 18 and made a run to the center and hit it into the left corner. There was no one around me so I was pretty confident it was going it.
“It was a rush and a great feeling. I’m so proud of our entire team. We kept out heads and we knew we could do this.”
Warsaw won with a dandy defensive effort Saturday. The Tigers, who had lost 2-1 at NorthWood way back on Aug. 29, simply shut down the Panthers. NorthWood, who was bidding for its’ first-ever sectional title, did not have a single shot on goal in the contest.
A big key for the champions was the play of Breck Jackson. The freshman defender drew the assignment of marking NorthWood standout Val Ostrowski. The Panther senior forward entered the match with 34 goals this season, including a pair Thursday night in a 4-0 win over Plymouth in a semifinal match.
“Breck just did a phenomenal job tonight,” said first-year Warsaw coach Peter Lucht. “Val is very talented and our defense just did a great job. Clair (Snodgrass) did a great job organizing our defense in the back.
“All of our ladies did a phenomenal job. We looked back on our three losses this season and we made some adjustments and formation shifts. It was just an awesome job by everyone on our tam from top to bottom.

“It’s huge to win the sectional. I want to continue to build on the tradition here. We had a lot of questions at the start of the season. The story lines were how are we going to replace Meredith Hollar (the program’s all-time leading scorer) and almost a whole team of players from last year. The girls have just done a great job this season.”
Lucht, a 2001 WCHS graduate, was not surprised at all to see the score come from Jackson to Hutcherson.
“We’ve scored off several set pieces like that this season,” Lucht said. “Brooklyn just has incredible accuracy. Brooklyn, Danielle and Liz (VanWormer) have all been involved heavily in our scoring this season.”
Hutcherson, a junior midfielder, said the early season loss to the Panthers was fuel for the fire.
“That first loss was motivation for us to beat them tonight,” concluded Hutcherson.
NorthWood, with seven seniors on its sectional roster, finishes the season 13-4-1.

