Noah Wadkins breaks away from a Memorial defender for his second score of the night. (Photos by Nick Goralczyk)

SYRACUSE – It was the performance the Wawasee football team had been waiting for. The Warriors used 462 yards of total offense to capture their first conference win of the season 31-21 over Elkhart Memorial.

“Everything just kind of worked the way we wanted it to tonight,” said Wawasee senior Zac McKee.”We had less turnovers, last week we had six. Our defense came out strong, our offense kept pounding it and it was working.”

The Warriors looked like they were going down a familiar path after fumbling on their first of the game. that turnover led to Zach Hawkins giving Memorial the game’s first score. A blocked PAT attempt by Wawasee’s Austin Pearish left Memorial with a 6-0 lead. Hawkins accounted for 224 total yards Friday night, but as successful as the elusive senior signal caller was, Wawasee was simply better as a team from start to finish.

The Warriors jumped out to a 14-6 lead thanks to a pair of rushing scores from Tyler Smith. Smith was given plenty of room to run, as was everyone in the Warriors backfield. Wawasee found something favorable in Memorial’s defense and exploited it all night.

“As a coaching staff we did a good job of identifying what Memorial was doing,” said Wawasee head coach Josh Ekovich. “We talked at the beginning of the season about cracking our opponent’s code, tonight we cracked Memorial’s code. They never changed and we made them pay for it.”

Wawasee had several big runs from Smith and Noah Wadkins. Wadkins had the other two scores for the Warriors. After Memorial tied the game at 14, Wadkins broke a 73-yard run on Wawasee’s ensuing possession. The junior finished the job a play later with a two-yard score giving the Warriors a 21-14 advantage. Wawasee’s defense held strong inside before the half inside its own 20 holding Memorial scoreless as time expired.

Wadkins found the end zone for the second time on a 28-yard rumble to put the Warriors up 14 in the third quarter. The junior had 151 yards on the ground, second only to Smith’s 167-yard output.

Memorial made things interesting with a score from Hawkins to AJ Gary with under 10 minutes to play. Wawasee did not buckle under the pressure that Memorial was applying and got a very important 39-yard field goal from Lucas Garza with 5:10 left in the game.

The 10-point cushion gave the Warriors some much needed breathing room. Memorial started to move the ball successfully on the ensuing drive but were eventually stopped on a fourth and long play by a fired up Warrior defense. Players were met by a swarm of students on the sideline to help celebrate the team’s first conference win of the season and to send the seniors out the right way.

Wawasee will travel to Goshen next week to take on the Redskins in the battle for the Traveling Chief Trophy. The Warriors have won the trophy the past five seasons and will look to continue that trend by just playing their game.

“We need to keep pounding the ball,” McKee said. “We have to work hard this next week. We made a few mistakes tonight, we have to fix those and get ready to come out strong against Goshen. Our defense has to make plays and our offense has to keep moving the ball.”

Wawasee (3-5, 1-5) and Goshen (4-4, 2-4) will kick at 7 p.m.