Warsaw’s Sam Yeager places his ball during Wawasee Invitational play Saturday at South Shore. (Photos by James Costello)

SYRACUSE — With three top 20-ranked teams at Saturday’s Wawasee Boys Golf Invitational, the top end of the team standings shook out pretty much like you’d expect.

Warsaw head coach Rich Haddad was hoping his Tigers would stick a little closer to the other ranked teams in the field — Chesterton and Homestead — but with his top two golfers struggling in the challenging conditions at South Shore, Warsaw couldn’t quite keep pace. Still, third place was a pretty respectable finish.

Chesterton topped Homestead by four strokes on a fifth score tiebreak for the team championship as both schools carded 310, while Warsaw placed third with a 325. NorthWood finished fifth with a 338, Wawasee’s top five finished sixth with a 363, Whitko was 10th with a 386, and Wawasee’s “Green” team placed 14th with a 407 at the 15-team invite Saturday.

Luke Delp sinks his putt for Warsaw.

“We think we can play with them. Today wasn’t our day to do that because our one and two didn’t play at the level they know they can, but I’m really encouraged by the three, four, five,” said Haddad. “It’s going to take five guys playing well so to see our three through five guys have good days, that was encouraging to me. The one and two, you’re going to have days like today, and sometimes you’ve got to throw those away and come back on Monday ready to play.”

While Sam Yeager turned in an 85, and Luke Delp shot 93, Warsaw got a very solid 78 from number three golfer Tommy Meier Saturday. His 36 at the turn was the second lowest score on the front nine at South Shore — behind NorthWood’s Caleb Lung — and he finished his round with bogey golf in windy and surprisingly cold conditions.

“Today he just shot an incredible front nine, was actually 2 under after seven. Shot even par, and then it just got windier and more exhausting the longer the day went, but he held it together,” explained Haddad of Meier’s round. “Actually got up and down out of the bunker on 17 to take a 78. I’m very happy for him. He’s been looking to break into the 70s all season, so that was a good victory for us.”

Jacob LaLonde’s 80 and Chase Byron’s 82 completed the Tigers’ score, with Delp’s 93 the toss-out for the Tigers.

Caleb Lung hits a tee shot on the front side of South Shore.

Lung gave the Panthers a strong 76 for fourth place overall in the individual standings. His 1-under-par 35 was the lowest score on the front nine at South Shore, but he carded that tally after the turn as NorthWood started on the back side.

“Caleb played really well to come out and shoot 76. It was good. He struck the ball very well,” said NorthWood coach Trevor Shields. “That’s a very respectable score today given the conditions, and I think it spoke volumes to how well he played, too, when I believe he had the low score on the back nine.”

Randy Kauffman shot 86 in the third flight for NorthWood, while Sean Hogan and Jacob Falk turned in a pair of 88s in the second and fourth groupings, respectively. Micah Pippenger shot 97 for the Panthers.

“That’s higher than we expect out of them, and they all know that they can play a little bit better than that,” Shields said. “We don’t have a lot of competitive rounds under our belt this year because the weather has been so poor. That’s something that we can go back and have some good things to work on this coming week because those guys can all play better than that.

“We know they can, they know they can, and now we’ve just got to do a couple things to correct some areas in their game and they can knock some strokes off of their game pretty quickly.”

Zach Leedy hits a shot off the fairway Saturday.

Wawasee’s “Gold” team was paced by Zach Leedy and his round of 84, meanwhile, but no other Warrior broke 90 Saturday. Evan Dippon shot 91 playing in the second grouping, and usual number three Dillion Drake carded another 91 in the fifth flight. Luke Weisser’s 97 completed his team’s score, and Jared Krugman’s 103 was the throw-away for the hosts.

“For Zach, that’s an OK score today. It’s not a great score, but the conditions were pretty tough. If you asked Zach he probably wouldn’t be totally happy with the round, but he did a good job for us,” said Wawasee coach Steve Coverstone.

“It’s the best we’ve played so far this year. We beat a few teams that beat us earlier so that’s good. We’re moving in the right direction.”

For Whitko, Dale Reiff shot 93, Kaleb Busz shot 94, and Cade Bechtold finished a stroke back with a 95. Kylar Bryant turned in a 104, and John Strayer shot 116.

For Wawasee’s “Green” team, Victor Tayagua turned in a 93, followed by dual 98s from Aiden Jonsson and Tyler Bosstick. Hunter Hlutke turned in a 118, and Jake Cowan shot 128.

The field at Saturday’s tournament featured three top-ranked squads as well as nearly the entire Northern Lakes Conference field — with the exceptions of Concord and Elkhart Memorial — and was a good early measuring stick for area teams to compare themselves against.

“This tournament is a really good opportunity for us to see where we stand, and you’ve got some ranked teams in the state as well in Warsaw, Chesterton and Homestead. So it’s a really good opportunity to kind of see where we’re at and identify some areas in our games that we need to work on,” Shields said.

“We want to see who we’re going to go up against, both in our conference but also in the region,” Haddad said. “We’ve tried to schedule more teams that we know we’re going to face later on. We’d rather play against them and see what they’ve got but also how we stack up. I think I’m encouraged that as our games continue to progress we’ll be very competitive at the conference for sure, and I think we’ve got a good shot at regionals. We’ve got to get through sectionals of course, but it’s good. It’s a good group. We came up a little short against the two best teams, but it was a good day. There are good things to take away.”