By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
It was a familiar sight, the Springfield Catholic girls golf team hoisting another district championship plaque.
The Lady Irish did it for the fifth year in a row on Thursday at Schifferdecker Golf Course in Joplin, with Catholic finishing with a team score of 350 – 17 strokes better than any other school in the Class 4 District 3 tournament.
“We have a tradition here so let’s keep it rolling,” said coach Frank Gallant.
Catholic will return to Joplin in about 10 days for the state tournament at Twin Hills Golf & Country Club. In the meantime, the Irish can savor another impressive showing.
There was Lyla Louderbaugh, the individual district champion, who carded a 1-under 70 to edge Ozark’s Josey Roberts by two strokes.
Grace Tiedemann followed in third place with a 75, and Sarah Han (102) and Audrey Moore (103) also contributed to the effort to qualify for state as a team.
“I thought Schifferdecker, for a municipal golf course, was a great place to play,” Gallant said. “It was friendly fairways, friendly rough. The big determining factor was the greens and I thought our kids handled them pretty well. Our back end 3-4-5 players didn’t play as well as they had been but they still ground it out and posted a score. Lyla and Grace, they carried the load like we thought they would and everybody else just had to do their job and compete.”
“My front nine was a lot stronger than my back nine,” Louderbaugh said. “I had a challenging time on the greens because they’re firm, so chipping was difficult but my putting was all right. My driver was not the best today and I was trying to figure that out while I was playing. I just put it away near the end of the round because it wasn’t worth it getting in the trees when I could hit 20 yards shorter and be on the fairway.”
CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS OF THE TOURNAMENT
Kickapoo shows big improvement
After finishing sixth at districts last fall, the Kickapoo girls grabbed second place on Thursday to become the only other school in the tournament to qualify for state. But the outcome, and the winner of a close competition between Kickapoo, Lee’s Summit and Raymore-Peculiar, wasn’t clear until the final few scores were posted.
When it was done, the Chiefs had a 367 on the board and finished six strokes ahead of the other two.
“If you would have told me at the beginning of the season that we would have finished this well I probably wouldn’t have thought that,” said coach Justin Drane. “We’re a young team, we graduated a lot last year so I didn’t really know what to expect coming in. I kind of had an idea at the beginning of the year that maybe we’ve got a chance of making some noise and having some individual qualifiers.”
Drane told his golfers the goal was to shoot 370 on Thursday.
“I said if we shoot 370 and that’s not good enough, then we’ll shake whoever’s hand beats us and say you guys played a great round,” he said. “They came out and did even better than that.”
Sarah Trotman led the Chiefs with an 83 and placed fifth individually. Addison Christopher was 10th with an 87, Ellie Guthrie tied for 19th at 96 and Jenna Crockett shot 101 to tie for 25th.
“Obviously you look at the top two there, Sarah shot an 83 and Addison 87,” Drane said. “The 87 was huge because if you look at other schools within striking distance of that second spot, that 87 was a big difference compared to other schools’ 94 or 96, whatever it was. Addison played really well.”
Four other locals qualify for state
Springfield Central, Republic, Ozark and Carthage each qualified one golfer for the state tournament.
Ozark’s Josey Roberts shot 72 to finish 1-over par and place second individually. She and Catholic’s Louderbaugh and Tiedemann were the only golfers to finish under 80.
Carthage’s Shay Gaddis tied for 7th with an 86. Republic’s Izzy Benson shot 89 to place 11th overall. Central’s Hampton Richards shot 95 to tie for 16th.
Team scores
Springfield Catholic 350
Kickapoo 367
Lee’s Summit 373
Raymore-Peculiar 373
Lee’s Summit West 377
Notre Dame de Sion 385
Ozark 428
Joplin 434
Waynesville 438
Nixa 458
Central 464
