WARSAW – The Warsaw boys track team will look to defend its home turf come Friday night.

But first, the Tigers want to take care of business in the Northern Lakes Conference.

Warsaw, which boasts an NLC winning streak of 31 in a row dating back to 2011, will host its own Max Truex Invitational Friday night. The Tigers first though will try to remain undefeated in league action by hosting NLC foe Northridge Thursday night.

“Honestly, we are more focused on the NLC and Northridge is our next opponent and that is what we will focus on this week,” said Warsaw coach Matt Thacker via email on Monday.  “We pretty much know our lineup for the Truex, which is a great meet for coaches to see how deep their teams truly are.  The main emphasis now is to get and keep guys healthy and win out the round robin portion of the NLC.”

Warsaw sits at 5-0 overall and 4-0 in the NLC after a pair of wins over Concord and Wawasee last Thursday. The Tigers placed sixth in Class A at the Goshen Relays Saturday, led by individual champions Rashaan Jackson (long jump), Owen Glogovsky (1,600) and Daniel Messenger (1,600).

“We ran where we thought we would,” remarked Thacker about the Goshen Relays.  “Dropping the baton hurt, but that happens and is a part of competition.  What is concerning is that we can be our own worst enemy as far what goes on between the ears.  The most important thing an athlete can do is to forget what happened the play or attempt before, but it is the most difficult thing to do as negative thoughts create excuses and excuses are easy.  I thought about it all weekend and we can either accept our failures or we can learn and make ourselves better from our failures, there is a difference.”

Warsaw will complete the NLC regular season May 6 at NorthWood versus the host Panthers and Plymouth. The Tigers will then host the NLC Meet on May 12.

The Max Truex field will include the defending champion hosts, along with Fairfield, Hobart, Penn, LaPorte, Valparaiso and Fort Wayne Wayne. Fairfield won the Class B championship at the Goshen Relays Saturday for the sixth time in the last seven years.

Field events begin at 6 p.m. Friday at Fisher Field. The 3,200 relay will begin action on the track at 6:30 p.m.