Warsaw Community 89.00-43.00 Northridge Warsaw Community 82.00-50.00 Concord Concord 79.00-53.00 Northridge The Warsaw Tigers continued their undefeated NLC season by racking up two more conference wins against unbeaten powerhouse teams from the Northridge Raiders and the Concord Minutemen. Warsaw pulled off a 89-43 win over the Raiders and a 82-50 victory over the Minutemen; Concord clipped Northridge 79-53 There were initial struggles for the Tigers on the track but the athletes regrouped and showed their grit by systematically wearing down their opponents event by event. The coaches learned a lot about their athletes capabilities and competitive nature in their most challenging meet of the season. The Tigers were led by event winners: Kam Kauffman (Discus) Personal Best…also 2nd in Shot Put James Leiter (Shot Put) Personal Best…also 2nd in Discus Tucker Reed (Pole Vault)...also 3rd in Long Jump Jordan Randall (High Jump)...also 2nd in 100m 4x100m (Zahmari Terry, Jordan Randall, Tucker Reed, Evan Davis) 43.31* Fastest time in over 8 years for the Tigers! Sam Allebach (300H) Personal Best) Jackson Gackenheimer (3200m) Stand out performers who did not win events but played pivotal roles in scoring tonight were: Tyler Mimnaugh (1600m-2nd, 3200m-2nd)...his best “Double” in his career based on times Cam Fox (400m) nearly ran a Personal Best after getting wisdom teeth removed Brody Duncan (400m) broke 54 seconds for the first time Parker Sweet (300H) came from behind to grab 3rd place over Concord in the final 2 steps Ian Parrott and Nolan Stump (Pole Vault) helped sweep the event over both schools Zahmari Terry (100m and 200m) had the best meet of his career and finished 3rd and 2nd respectively Robbie Straughan (High Jump) cleared two new heights to finish at 5-08 Ben Booren (Shot Put and Discus) threw a new Personal Best in Discus to take 4th and grabbed a 3rd place in Shot Put Quinton Wilson (Discus and Shot Put) continues to improve and challenge for top spots Next up for the Tigers is their highly competitive Max Truex Invitational on Friday, May 2 at 6:00p. Invited teams include: Carmel, Carroll, Homestead, LaPorte, Valparaiso, Penn, Elkhart. Coach Erba, your team has gone most of four seasons with an undefeated NLC record. In such a competitive conference, how are your athletes able to maintain such consistency? “We have a healthy respect for our competition and do not take anything for granted. I have been highly impressed that our guys have stepped in to pick each other up when we don’t have the best of results and they are there to compete. Whenever a challenge is put in front of them, they have responded in incredible ways. We expected tonight’s meet to be close and we discussed that every place counts: taking 3rd place in an event to score a point does not seem like much but over 13 individual events, those points add up. Mostly, we are focused on digging in to give ALL YOU’VE GOT and use the competition to push to new levels. It certainly is exciting and rewarding to see our athletes rise to new levels without realizing what they are doing; they are just competing. In the end, that is what we train for and that is all we can ask of them. I am certainly proud of our Senior class who have put themselves on the inside track to go four straight years of being undefeated in dual meets and to put an exclamation point on the conference with a fourth straight NLC title. It is not over yet, but this is shaping up to be a historic finish for these impressive athletes.” You have your final NLC meet at Wawasee with Plymouth next Wednesday but before that, you are hosting your own Max Truex Invitational on Friday. How do you approach these meets as the Tournament Season is just around the corner (NLC Championships May 13)? “This Friday is going to be an amazing opportunity to compete against top competitors outside the NLC; the format of the meet allows us to see a lot of our athletes compete against each other which will be instrumental in helping determine our Tournament rosters. The following week we will get a final chance to race, jump, and throw to set PRs and finally establish our Tournament roster. It will be intense and stressful but we will get to see how our athletes handle this pressure; those who can rise to the occasion will likely be earning the opportunity to compete in the following weeks. Right now, due to our depth in many events, we have many options and we coaches will be collaborating to set up line ups we feel give us the best chance to score a lot of points and advance relays and individuals in the State Tournament series. We have more areas to improve in a short amount of time which certainly raises the level of intensity in practice; we need to continue learning from mistakes and then make the necessary changes to eliminate them in our preparations and performances. We are excited about the upcoming meets knowing that these are going to be the final meets of the season when our performances will be topping out for 2025.”