Golf closes out regular season at Conference Tournament

The High School Golf Team concluded its regular season on Monday, April 26, at Dream Valley Golf Course in Buffalo. Leading up to the event the season was very successful both individually and as a team. Coach Beckner said, “It has been a great season so far, weather could have been better at times but, hey, that is a spring sport. I was very happy with our team and am excited to see them participate again at districts.”

The season started out with the team traveling to Clinton so face off with Clinton and Warsaw in a practice meet. The Bulldogs fell to Clinton but defeated Warsaw. The next few weeks were very busy as the team faced Stockton, Nevada, Warsaw, Clinton, Butler at other match play events and playing tournaments at Clever and Aurora.

The team finished with a match record of 6-2 and placed 3rd as a team at the Clever tournament (8 strokes behind 2nd) and 2nd place at the Aurora tournament. Individually, juniors Devun Salazar and Auston Smith have been the backbone of the team each placing in the top 8 at each tournament. Devun won the overall tournament at Clever with Auston placing top 8. Both placed in the top 6 at Aurora. At the OHC Tournament in Buffalo, Devun and another golfer tied for the low school of the day with the overall champion coming down to a tie breaker. The tiebreaker was determined by who scored lower on the hardest hole on the course, Devun scoring one more than the other. With Devun placing 2nd, Auston Smith came out and placed 5th giving the team 2 top 5 scores and momentum for the team standings. The course proved tough for all remaining competitors as the Bulldogs slipped to third place in overall standings, 1 stroke behind 2nd place.

Looking forward the Bulldogs will prepare for districts which are being held at Island Green golf course in Republic. The tournament will be May 10. “We are going to change up our approach to practice a bit during this break between competitions. We left some strokes out there at conference, some of that was poor planning on my end with the players having some fatigue in the later holes from playing our practice round the day before; some were just on poor shots or poor shot selection. If we can figure out how to tune a few small things, we might give ourselves a chance to score low and move on to State.”