As the late Tom Petty said, the waiting is the hardest part.

Lincoln-Way Central’s boys golf team found that out Monday in the Class 3A Lockport Sectional at Wedgewood.

The Knights were one of the first teams to complete their round and had a score of 295. They sat in the clubhouse chatting and eating, went to the putting green for a few practice strokes and waited for the other teams to finish.

Both O’Fallon and Lincoln-Way East were slightly ahead of Lincoln-Way Central entering the final few holes. They were tied after 16 holes and Lincoln-Way East took a one-shot lead over O’Fallon after 17. At that point, both Lincoln-Way schools were tied at 11 over, and the tie-breaker would have gone to East via the Griffins having the better score by the fifth golfer. However, Lincoln-Way East’s final golfer bogied on 18, and O’Fallon’s double-bogied, giving the sectional championship to Lincoln-Way Central. Lincoln-Way East finished second with 296, while O’Fallon was third with 298. All three advance to this weekend’s state tournament at The Den at Fox Creek in Bloomington. Lincoln-Way West finished eighth in the 12-team field with a score of 314.

Central was led by an even-par round of 71 by Connor Kelch, which was good for second individually behind Belleville West’s Mathan Meurer, who shot 3-under 68. Also contributing for Lincoln-Way Central were Brody Wall (72), Ethan Ridings (74), Aidan Blum (78), Aidan Barker (81) and Matthew Preski (83).

“To be honest, I would rather be on the course chasing a score than sitting and waiting,” Kelch said. “When I’m on the course, I feel like I have some control over things. When I am in the clubhouse, you just have to wait. You can’t play defense, so everything is up to the other teams. It felt really good when we saw the final scores come in, though.

“Our whole team is very good. It helps us relax, knowing that if one of us has a bad day, the rest of the team is going to pick that person up. For me today, my putting was really good. I made a lot of putts and that definitely helped.”

Central coach Ryan Pohlmann was happy to see the team aspect at play with his squad.

“We put up a good score early and made teams chase us,” he said. “I had talked to a few Lincoln-Way Central alumni who have a lot of experience with this course and they gave us some good advice. We won the Will County open here, and we knew we would have one of the best teams here today.

“Lincoln-Way East and O’Fallon have great teams and could have won it on a different day. I am proud of our guys for surrendering themselves to the team. They are focused on how well the team does. They know that if they are off that day that someone is going to pick them up. We have a perfect blend of juniors who have been up with the varsity for three years like Brody Wall and Connor Kelch and kids who work their butts off like Matthew Preski, Aiden Barker, Ethan Ridings and Aidan Blum.”

Lincoln-Way East got a round of 72 from Tyler Rea, 73 from Nico Mancini, 74 from Collin Bettenhausen, 77 from James Hull, 79 from Carmine Moccio and 83 from Seamus Moran.

“We play together a lot and get along with each other really well,” Mancini said. “The goal here was to finish in the top three and advance to state. It’s [Coach Jim] Nair’s last year, so we want to send him out in style. The best our school has ever done at state is seventh, so we want to do better than that and hopefully bring home a trophy.

“The good thing about this team is that we could come to the same course tomorrow and all six guys might be in a different place in the order, but we would all have pretty close to the same score.”

Nair echoed Mancini’s thoughts.

“We have a lot of very good golfers,” Nair said. “There are a lot of good golfers in our program that didn’t even golf today. We went with the hot hands and it worked out. I am very proud of the guys for toughing it out. We got off to a fast start, but had some struggles on the middle holes. Then we were able to come back and finish strong.

“The goal today was to finish in the top three and advance to state. Our best ever is seventh in state, so we are hoping to beat that.”

The top 10 individuals not on one of the three advancing teams also qualify for the state meet. There were five players - Minooka’s Gabe Ciesielski, Lockport’s Zachary Skrzypiec, Edwardsville’s Brian Cooper, Belleville West’s Alec Jobe and Peoria Richwoods’ Hayden Lockbaum - tied at 74 and had to have a playoff to determine the final two qualifiers. Those final two spots went to Jobe and Lockbaum.