Lady Warriors Close Out With Win

In the final regular season match of the girls golf calendar, the Wawasee Lady Warriors traveled to Lake James and beat host Fremont 182-228.

Elizabeth Jackson took the reigns as medalist Thursday afternoon, shooting a 43 with teammate Courtney McDaniel shaking off a little rust with a 44. Aubrey Schmeltz was one stroke back at 45 and Kamryn Foy capped the varsity addition with a 50.

Alivia Bohnfeldt paced Fremont with a 46, but the next lowest score for the squad was a 56 from Raigan Vorath.

“We won, that’s always good. But we have stuff to work on before Saturday,” stated Wawasee head coach Steve Coverstone upon return from Lake James. “Our putting was really bad tonight. We had way too many putts and the greens at Maplecrest are fast so we need to work on that in a short period of time.”

Wawasee, which inks a 16-3 regular season record, will move to postseason responsibilities beginning with Saturday’s Northern Lakes Conference meet at Maplecrest Country Club in Goshen. The Lady Warriors will tee off with NorthWood, Plymouth and Warsaw beginning at 9 a.m.

The IHSAA Girls Golf Sectional hosted by Warsaw at Stonehenge Country Club will take place Sept. 21. NorthWood, Plymouth and Warsaw are all among the sectional field.

Northridge Steadies The Course

Northridge had little trouble navigating its home cross country course Thursday night, sweeping both Wawasee and Concord in the boys and girls races held at Bonneyville Mill. The races were run Thursday in response to the heat the area had Tuesday when the races were originally to be held.

Northridge’s girls were led by the top time of 20:08 from Mackenzie Love and took four of the top five places in beating Wawasee 17-44 and Concord 16-47. Bre Robinson broke up the Northridge party in the top five with a fourth-place time of 20:58, helping Wawasee beat Concord 25-30 to salvage a split. Concord’s Vanessa Steiner was sixth overall at 21:34.

The Raiders were not messing around in the boys race, taking seven of the top nine places in a shutout 15-50 win over Concord and a 16-45 win over Wawasee while the Warriors topped Concord 22-37. Blake O’Dell led Northridge with a 17:02 finish, pacing five Raiders to times at or under 18 minutes. Wawasee’s Adam Doll timed in at 17:47 and fifth place overall, followed by Zach Cockrill in seventh at 18:03. Concord were down the list with Dominic Proffitt the best Minuteman in 11th place at 18:30.

“We went out pretty hard. The race caught up to us, unfortunately,” stated Wawasee head coach Doug Slabaugh. “But we went out and we went out hard, and we were going to challenge them from the gun.

“We’ve got a long way to go before we see (Northridge) again at conference so there is time to get better. We got a good learning experience tonight even though we lost to Northridge.”

The Wawasee programs both leave the Mill with 4-1 overall records and will get back to NLC racing Tuesday when it travels to Plymouth for a triangular with the hosts and Elkhart Memorial.

Raiders Roll

In Northern Lakes Conference boys tennis Thursday afternoon at Wawasee, the Northridge Raiders claimed at least a win over Wawasee, taking four of the five courts. The fifth, three singles, did not finish its match.

Josh Garfein closed out a 6-0, 6-1 win over Kyler Love at one singles and Austin Schmidt beat Todd Hauser 6-2, 6-1 at two singles. The three singles match between Warrior Cal Heinisch and Raider Andarsh Patel was called with Heinisch winning the first set 7-5 and Patel leading 4-3 in the second set.

Both doubles courts were taken by the Raiders in straight sets, with Clay Schnell and Ted Field winning 6-1, 7-5 over Dylan Houser and Chase Myers at one doubles and Landon Arnold and Sam Hoover going 6-2, 6-1 over Luke Smith and Jake Hutchinson.

Northridge won all eight JV courts in action, not allowing more than three points on any court.

Wawasee (6-6, 0-4 NLC) will look to regain momentum when it hosts rival Warsaw next Tuesday.

Warriors, Panthers Fit To Be Tied

A fiesty, hotly contested boys soccer match at NorthWood Thursday night saw both teams show the passion, but leave the pitch in a scoreless draw.

NorthWood put plenty of pressure on Wawasee, taking 10 total shots but Warrior keeper Korey Knafel was up to the task in stopping all ten attempts to record his first varsity shutout.

Wawasee (3-3-2, 0-1-1 NLC) managed just two shots on the stingy Panther defense, and were assessed a pair of yellow cards.

“We had a good night but it really could have been better,” Wawasee head coach Jordan Sharp stated upon return to Syracuse. “It was a dog fight out there tonight. Just back and forth from start to finish. We really couldn’t get anything flowing for us. We would get all the way down the field and then be sent right back out. We just couldn’t get the pressure on the offensive end that we needed.”

The Warriors will return to action Saturday morning when it hosts Elkhart Memorial, an 11:30 a.m. kickoff.

Freshmen Eek Out Win

The Wawasee freshman football team squeezed out a tight game Thursday night in Middlebury, beating Northridge 22-21. Statistics were not provided by Wawasee from the game. The Warriors move to 3-0 with the win and will host Concord next Thursday.