SYRACUSE – When Scott Erba took over the Warsaw girls track and field program more than a decade ago, Northridge and Wawasee were the top teams in the Northern Lakes Conference. Erba, now in his 13th season with the Lady Tigers, has certainly changed the culture of the Warsaw program, and Tuesday’s triangular meet was yet another reminder of who the dominant team is now. With a 93-39 win over host Wawasee and a 90-42 victory over Northridge, the Lady Tigers ran their NLC win streak to 54. Warsaw has finished 7-0 in the conference in seven consecutive seasons, and very few of the wins have been by narrow margins. Northridge defeated Wawasee 76-56 Tuesday. “I remember my first year of coaching, looking at the NLC results, and Wawasee and Northridge were the two best teams in the conference,” said Erba, whose Lady Tigers are looking for their 11th straight conference title when they host the NLC Meet next week. “I looked at a spread sheet of points and where they scored, and the one thing I noticed was neither of those teams scored zero points in any events at the NLC Meet. Even if it was only one or two points, they scored in every event. There were events where we didn’t score at all. That was a definitive point in my mind ... we needed to develop a team that could score in every event. We’re gonna have strengths, but we’re gonna be good enough to score in every event. It all adds up.” It certainly does. And it certainly has, as the Lady Tigers haven’t lost to an NLC opponent since falling in a close meet with Elkhart Memorial in 2009. Erba has built a program that each year boasts incredible depth. Against Northridge and Wawasee Tuesday, the Lady Tigers won 11 of 16 events, and a number of second and third-place finishes helped Warsaw pile up the points. Audrey Rich was a double winner for the Lady Tigers, taking the 100 and 200. Sisters Mia and Remi Beckham each won an individual event, with Mia winning the 1600 and Remi the 400. Other individual winners for Warsaw included Alexie Day (high jump), Joelle Messenger (pole vault), Maygan Bellamy (300 hurdles) and Allison Miller (3200). The Lady Tigers were winners in all three relays. The 4x800 team of Hannah Dawson, Brooke Rhodes, Anna Craig and Miller won in 9:39.13. The 4x100 squad of Bellamy, Makayla Clampitt, Abbi Curtis and Rich crossed the line in 50.45 seconds. And in the final event of the evening, Warsaw’s quartet of Bellamy, Remi Beckham, Rhodes and Rich won the 4x400 in 4:07.66, eight seconds ahead of runner-up Northridge. “A lot of it is depth,” Erba said when asked what has led his team to another perfect conference season. “We had Samantha Alexander out, she’s been sick since the weekend, and I was hoping to have her tonight, but she still had a fever. “You look at someone like her, that’s a lot of points, and to still have the team score as many points as we did ... that’s a big deal. We had a lot of other girls step up.” Wawasee won three events Tuesday. Casey Schroeder was first in the long jump, while Alexis Manges won the discus competition and Katlyn Kennedy scored a victory in the shot put. Northridge claimed victories with Emily Wargo in the 100 and Mariah King in the 800.
