Braedyn O’Dell led Northridge with a 42 during Tuesday’s match at McCormick Creek with NorthWood and Wawasee. (Photos by Nick Goralczyk)

NAPPANEE — A muggy evening set the stage for Tuesday’s Northern Lakes Conference showdown between Northridge, NorthWood and Wawasee. The three teams entered the match with three of the best records in the conference and the links of McCormick Creek would be the site to separate the Panthers from the rest of the pack.

NorthWood shot a 176, not far off from its season best (170) to topple the Raiders 190 and Warriors (201). By picking up the two wins, NorthWood moves to 5-0 in conference play and now controls its destiny in attempting to clinch at least a share of the NLC crown for the fifth year in a row.

“We’re walking around with a lot more confidence these past two weeks than we were the first two weeks,” stated NorthWood head coach Adam Yoder. “We took a pretty long road trip for about a week, so we got thrown into the fire pretty quick. But, yeah, we have a lot of confidence right now, especially playing at home.”

NorthWood’s entire team carried itself well in Tuesday’s win. But coming as no surprise was the cool performance of Summer Stillson on such a hot night. The senior captain earned medalist honors by shooting a 38.

Backing Stillson’s score were three solid efforts with Mackenzie Weaver (44), Abby Slabaugh (47) and Madison Richner (47). Alaina Benjamin had a solid night as well with a 51.

“We played solid, we played smart,” Yoder said. ” We didn’t do anything to really kill ourselves. We steered it around and made sure we didn’t make any mistakes. That’s hard to do sometimes. It’s hard to balance playing to win and playing not to lose. Summer was a great senior leader for us and Madison Richner is working her way back. Some girls were average, some were not happy with what they did, but the bottom line is that we won.”

Wawasee was not able to defend its 4-1 conference mark, but that was far from a surprise to coach Steve Coverstone.

“Historically, we’ve never done well here,” said Coverstone. “We had three girls out there tonight that had never even played this course before. We weren’t able to get a practice round in here before this match and it showed. I thought we did alright, all things considered, but we still have some work to do before coming back here for the conference tournament.”

Wawasee was led by Madison Beaman’s 41. Aubrey Schmeltz signed for a 45. Those were the two girls that had played McCormick before, the remainder of the roster had not. Wawasee’s scores were rounded out by Zoe White’s 65, Jadison Rostochak’s 55 and Lesley Tayagua’s 60.

Northridge was led by Braedyn O’Dell’s 42. Ashley Brewster (47), Cate Tomkins (49), Alayna Frey (52) and Melissa Weaver (64) rounded out the scores for the Raiders.

NorthWood (6-0, 5-0) plays at Stonehenge against Warsaw and Goshen on Thursday while Wawasee (10-6, 4-3) will play in the Culver Academy Invite this Saturday.

On September 10 NorthWood and McCormick Creek will host the Northern Lakes Conference tournament.

“Our conference is pretty deep this year,” posed Yoder. “I think there’s two teams at the bottom and I’d like to think we’re on team that’s doing pretty well at the top, but the other five teams in the middle are so close together. They’re all capable of beating each other and I guarantee you that they’re all capable of beating us. We’ve been fortunate enough to play well on the right nights.”