Three-Peat For Warsaw Golfers SYRACUSE — When you get four golfers named all-conference and another earning honorable mention status, odds are you did pretty well that season. For the second-ranked Warsaw Tigers, that's the case. With Warsaw junior Tyler Ostrom getting his second-straight Northern Lakes Conference medalist honor, he was joined by teammates sophomore Tim Ahlersmeyer, senior Eric Tandy and sophomore Jon Schram on the All-NLC team, while junior Bennett Hollar was honorable mention, as the Tigers won Saturday's NLC Championships at South Shore Golf Club in Syracuse. "Since I've been here, I've never seen any team get everybody honored (as all-conference) and I don't know if I've ever seen a team get four out of five," ninth-year Warsaw coach Ben Barkey said. "That's real exciting. It tells you where Warsaw's program is at in the conference." Warsaw shot a 309 on South Shore's par-72 course, while Northridge shot a 315, followed by Goshen's 321, Plymouth's 322 and Wawasee's 332 to round out the top five. Accompanied with Warsaw's 7-0 regular season mark in the NLC, the Tigers wrapped up their third-straight conference title. "I think conference is harder to win than a sectional," Barkey, who coached his fifth Warsaw team to an NLC title, said. "Just the way it is formatted with nine-hole matches counting for half of your points. Anything can happen in a nine-hole match. So, we're real happy to have three-in-a-row. The kids worked really hard." After going undefeated in the regular season, a couple sub-par rounds at the conference tournament, could have allowed Northridge to get the top score, therefore earning a split of the crown, but Warsaw didn't let that happen. "You just play it one hole at a time," Barkey said. "Maybe it's in the back of your mind. But if you're talking about pressure, the first thought may be, 'Hey, let's not mess this up, because we're in the lead.' But the second thought probably is, 'Well, if we get second, we share (the conference title).' That probably relieves some of the pressure. Yeah, we don't want to share, but we've shared in the past." As if the battle between Warsaw and Northridge wasn't good enough over 18 holes, Ostrom and Northridge's David Long had to play a couple extra holes to determine the individual NLC champ. "Anytime you're in a playoff, you want to win," Barkey said. "That's his mindset — he's very competitive. You probably wouldn't know that if you talked to him and hung around him. I guarantee he would have been real disappointed if he had lost that playoff." Following 18 holes, Ostrom and Long were knotted at 75, and proceeded to the 10th tee to break the tie. On the playoff hole, Long appeared to have the upper hand after he placed his second shot seven yards from the pin and Ostrom had his second land off the green. However, Long missed his putt and Ostrom was able to position himself with a chance to shoot par, which he did, forcing a second playoff. Playing on the 11th hole, each player's tee shot landed off the fairway, with Long's going to the right and Ostrom's ending up to the right, with a few trees in his way. Long's second shot put him back on the fairway, but Ostrom's went straight up, hitting a tree branch and falling about 10 yards ahead of where it had been. "You can't really get mad," Ostrom said about hitting the tree. "You have to just try to calm yourself down as much as you can. It's not over. I wasn't really out of it, because we both hit bad second shots." On his third shot, Ostrom got right back into it, putting the ball 25 feet past the hole, but on the green, while Long's went behind Ostrom's, rolling off the green. After two shots, Long had bogeyed the hole, opening the door for Ostrom to finish it with a long putt, which he did. "It's not a great percentage shot, and I also struggled putting today, but it got better as the round went along," Ostrom said about hitting the 25-foot putt. Winning a round via a playoff isn't anything new for Ostrom, who accomplished the feat at last season's NLC tournament, as well as last year's sectional and his past two Culver Military Academy Invitational titles. "We'd love to see him continue to play well, because it's definitely going to take us playing well to advance to state," Barkey said about Ostrom. "There's a lot of good teams in the regional field, and we're going to need all of our players playing their best." Along with Ostrom's 75, Warsaw got a 76 from Ahlersmeyer, a 78 from Schram, as well as Tandy's 80 and Hollar's 81. While those scores earned conference honors for each of them, the Tigers seemed to think they could do better. "I don't think anybody played up to how they wanted, but winning conference is still pretty special," Ostrom said. Those scores also helped Barkey earn coach of the year honors. "My coach of the year is a product of the players that I get to be around on a daily basis," Barkey said about his third-straight coach of the year award. "We're a unit. We work together as a unit, so any kind of accolades we get, we take them as a group regardless as if it's medalist or something like coach of the year." The Wawasee Warriors had two players shoot an 82 in Derek Zurcher and Luke Jackson, while Josh Matti had an 83, Ben Jackson had an 85 and Tyler finished with an 88. "I was pretty happy with the way the guys played today, to be honest," Wawasee coach Steve Coverstone said. "I'm not happy with the way we played holes six, seven, eight and nine, which were our last four holes. We were really in good shape to do something really good." Prior to Warsaw's three-straight conference titles, it was Wawasee that had won the hardware. But in a conference with the likes of Warsaw and Northridge, there's no time for a rebuild. "We're just a little short on the experience side, it's not on age," Coverstone said. Warsaw and Wawasee meet up again today at the inaugural Bob Turner Classic at Tippecanoe Lake Country Club. Following that matchup, the two squads will compete against each other again June 4 at Stonehenge Golf Club for the Warsaw Sectional. At the Stonehenge, Ostrom will look to win his second-straight individual sectional title, as well as his team's third. "Hopefully we can keep it going through the postseason and on to state," he said.
WARSAW 309, NORTHRIDGE 315, GOSHEN 321, PLYMOUTH 322, WAWASEE 332, CONCORD 333, NORTHWOOD 335, ELKHART MEMORIAL 336 (South Shore GC, Par 72)
Top 8 (All-Conference) — 1. Tyler Ostrom (War) 75, 2. David Long (Nr) 75, 3. Austin Bender (G) 76, 4. Tim Ahlersmeyer (War) 76, 5. Nate Kolter (P) 77, 6. Logan McBride (Nr) 77, 7. Eric Tandy (War) 80, 8. Jon Schramm (War) 78 Warsaw — Ostrom 75, Tandy 80, Schram 78, Bennett Hollar 81, Ahlersmeyer 76 Northridge — McBride 77, Long 75, Rhett Holloway 81, Jeremy Kauffman 82, Will Erekson 84 Goshen — Brandon Doss 79, Bender 76, Steven Koronkiewicz 81, Austin Shaffer 86, Alex Hartsough 85 NorthWood — Dylan Gessinger 84, Jesse Morganthaler 82, Payton Grubbs 86, Jon Christofeno 83, Nate Trippel 87 Concord — Alex Happer 80, Caleb Partin 78, Ryan Bontrager 87, AJ Sandin 88, Brodie Kime 90 Memorial — Frank Iavagnilio 85, Noah Strati 80, Sam Rodino 84, Kyle Lipa 87, Matt Kibiloski 96 Wawasee — Ben Jackson 85, Derek Zurcher 82, Luke Jackson 82, Josh Matti 83, Tyler Hare 88 Plymouth — Mitch Holloway 82, Kolter 77, Patrick Felke 81, Kurt Corsbie 82, John Ruff 84 All-NLC Honorable Mention — Doss (G), Holloway (P), Hollar (War), Happer (C)
