SYRACUSE – Wawasee used the wind and some unlikely names to post a very solid 81-51 Northern Lakes Conference boys track win over Plymouth Thursday night at a blustery Warrior Field.

Wawasee’s Clayton Cook sails over the hurdle in a 13.90 win in the 110-meter hurdles race against Plymouth Thursday night. (Photos by Mike Deak)

Before the state goes on red alert with this time – 10.51 – in the 100-meter dash by Wawasee’s Clayton Cook, understand there was a 20-mile-per-hour wind blowing directly down the home stretch. While Cook has posted some very fast times this spring and is capable, head coach Scott Lancaster made quick point to note Cook is not quite at an Olympic level. And won’t be any time soon.

“It’s nice to see people can move body parts that fast, wind or not,” laughed Lancaster. “We do that in training, trying to move the body faster. The wind can take you so far, but there is some truth to how fast you can run. Even if it is wind-aided.”

The wind shouldn’t diminish what Cook and his available teams did put together against a very sound Plymouth team. Missing several keys pieces to the puzzle whether through injury or for a handful on a class trip to Texas for the Super Mileage car showcase, Wawasee managed to have a few step in while the stars still lit up the track.

Jon Walker of Wawasee won the discus with a toss of 139’11”.

The Warriors (3-0 NLC) took 12 of the 16 events run Thursday and had a handful of names appear at the top of the lists that normally are not event winners. Jon Walker won the discus with a winning toss of 139’11” and was also fourth in the shot put and third in the pole vault, an event he trained for one day knowing Wawasee’s top two pole vaulters would be unavailable.

Sam Griner was a double winner in the one-mile (5:05.30) and two-mile (11:06.61) races. Griner was surrounded in both races by a convoy of Wawasee runners, and while some of the juniors and seniors could have ran away for better times, the freshman was escorted in by the experienced upperclassmen in a great show of teamwork. Wawasee swept both races convincingly.

Austin Rhodes sent the shot put at 41’10” for his first-ever event win with teammate Hunter Jones landed less than three inches off the mark for second place.

“This meet we were motivated because we lost a lot to the Super Mileage kids racing a car in Texas,” Lancaster said, noting contributors like Austin Yoder and Austin Trowbridge were out on the trip. “With them, we could have put this thing away very early. But that allows us to see people like Jon Walker and Austin Rhodes step in and score us some points. We had several do that for us tonight and that was a good thing to see.”

Dakota Brooke of Plymouth leads the runners to the finish line of the junior varsity 100-meter dash.

Cook would post two more individual wins, taking both the 110 hurdles (13.90) and the 300 hurdles (42.21) without much opposition, the 110 more commanding than the 300. JJ Gilmer also added his customary two wins in high jump (5’10”) and long jump (19’06.5″) but was hampered somewhat by the wind and its effects on his aerodynamics. Zach Cockrill ran a very impressive 1:59.59 in the 800, just missing the junior class record by less than a second held by Bill Sohl of 1:59.06 set in 1992.

Wawasee’s 4×100 and 4×800 relay teams both claimed wins, the speedsters at 44.37 and the pacers at 10:14.00.

Relays will be the theme this weekend as Wawasee will be among the many competing at Saturday’s Goshen Relays, a showcase of the who’s who of boys track in northern Indiana. Considering Wawasee will still have the Super Mileage kids in Texas and only a day to recover from the Plymouth meet, Lancaster isn’t expecting his team to exceed standards at the mega-meet. He wants his team ready for the showdown next Thursday with Warsaw and Concord.

“We really want to do well and run against the competition,” started Lancaster. “But, we are going in on one day of rest. We can’t really do a whole lot to prepare. We’ll be sore. We’ll work on some of the relay handoffs for the events we normally don’t run in a normal weekday meet. We’ll just go to Goshen and do what we can and try to stay healthy for the conference meets ahead.”