NAPPANEE — The Warsaw Tigers football team took one on the chin Friday night. There is no way to dress it up and make it look nice. In the biggest game of the season, Warsaw was outplayed by the best team in the Northern Lakes Conference. NorthWood hosted the Tigers at Andrews Field needed a win to clinch an outright conference title and the Panthers did not let the home crowd down. NorthWood thumped Warsaw 61-24 to clinch its first NLC crown since 2004 and first outright NLC title since 1996.

Bronson Yoder celebrates his first of three scores during Friday’s conference-clinching victory over Warsaw. (Photos by Nick Goralczyk)

“You can’t make mistakes,” said Warsaw head coach Phil Jensen. “Against a great team, you can’t make mistakes. And boy, we’d make a mistake, they’d capitalize. We’d make a mistake, they’d capitalize. We’d make a mistake, they’d capitalize. It just snowballed on us.”

NorthWood jumped out to a 16-0 lead behind scoring runs from Bronson Yoder and Brayton Yoder, respectively. The Panthers also converted both two-point tries to get the most out of each possession. It looked as it NorthWood would be running away early, but Warsaw was not quite ready to concede.

The Tigers responded in a big way after falling behind 16-0. Michael Jensen led Warsaw on a three-play drive that was capped by a 21-yard throw to Devin Street. On the ensuing Panther drive, NorthWood was stopped on a fourth down attempt on its own 29. Warsaw turned that into a 43-yard Andrew Mevis field goal to cut the deficit to 16-10 late in the first. But it was all just a mess after that.

NorthWood marched down the field and got another scoring run from Brayton Yoder and a two-point play to make things 24-10 with 7:16 to play in the second quarter. The Tigers fumbled the ensuing kickoff and NorthWood scored on the very next play, a 20-yard pass from Trey Bilinski to Drew Minnich. Another two-point conversion made the score 32-10 with 7:04 to play in the half.

In the final 3:51 the Panthers would score three more times, totaling 22 points. Bilinski hit Brayton Yoder for the first of those three scores. The other two were scored by Bronson Yoder, including a one-yard run on fourth and one at the goal line while time expired. NorthWood outscored Warsaw 38-0 in the second and led 54-10 at the break in what was now a shocking performance on both sides of the ball.

A 60-yard run on third and one from Brayton Yoder in the third quarter was NorthWood’s only score of the second half, putting the home team up 61-10. Warsaw scored twice in the game’s final six minutes, both runs from sophomore Bryce Garner.

NorthWood tallied 493 yards of total offense to Warsaw’s 269. The Tigers also had four turnovers where NorthWood did not have any. Brayton Yoder led all players with 109 yards rushing. Bronson had 43 yards on the ground. Each player scored three times.

There were four other players for NorthWood that tallied a double-digit rushing number. Bilinski was 17-22 for 265 yards and two scores. Warsaw was led by 89 passing yards from Jensen. The senior quarterback also had 57 rushing yards. Will McGarvey led the Tigers on the ground with 72 yards.

Devin Street shows the official that he made the catch during the first quarter of Friday’s game.

“They have great athletes,” Jensen started to explain of NorthWood. “They’re very well coached. They line up, look where you’re not, and then they attack you there. They find your weak spot and use it against you. You can’t take away everything from them and it showed tonight.”

NorthWood head coach Nate Andrews was asked about guiding the Panthers to their first outright title since 1996.

“It’s a long time and you can look at all of our state banners and see our conference championships and it’s amazing we haven’t had an outright one in 20 years,” Andrews said. “We shared the title in 2004. It’s special, it’s impressive and it’s tough to do. It’s a tough league. To get an outright title in this league is next to impossible, as evidenced by 20 years. Hopefully these guys understand and the people here understand what it takes to make this happen again some day.”

Next Friday NorthWood (8-0, 6-0) will travel to play Plymouth (4-4, 3-3) in hopes of capping a perfect regular season before hosting Columbia City in the first round of sectionals in two weeks. Warsaw (5-3, 4-2) will play host to Concord (5-3, 4-2).

“We’re going to be tested,” Jensen said of his team’s upcoming game. “Our will, our heart, our guts, that’s all going to be tested. That’s what we talked about at halftime. We didn’t quit, we came out and fought in the second half. But it’s not going to be easy tomorrow morning.

“It’s not going to be easy for the seniors to get up and go do Feed My Starving Children and face a crowd of people after this happens. But, you know what, that’s part of growing up. Maybe that’s the lesson we need to learn. We’ll see.”