Local girls golf coaches can be forgiven if they aren’t ready to proclaim any of their own teams as one of the three likely to make it out of Saturday’s sectional and on to the regional.
The Highland Sectional will be played with a shotgun start at 8 a.m. at Grandview Golf Course. Nine teams are entered, and three will advance to the New Castle Regional. The top three individuals not on one of those three teams will also move on.
The reason that the six Madison County squads aren’t brimming with confidence is that the remaining three teams are being imported from Hamilton County and all three are ranked in the top 20 in the most recent poll by the state’s golf coaches.
Those three are No. 1-ranked Hamilton Southeastern, No. 9 Noblesville and No. 18 Fishers.
“Those are going to be the top three teams to advance no doubt,” said Highland coach Bob Windlan.
Not everyone is willing to complete concede that yet.
“We have three kids who can shoot in the 80s and two that can get into the 90s,” said Lapel coach John Maryan, whose team won the Madison County title. “It’s a longshot, but that’s why we play the match.”
“We would need to drop 20 strokes from our previous low score as a team to have a chance,” said Pendleton Heights coach Chad Taflinger.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that with the remaining six teams (Highland, Anderson, Alexandria, Pendleton Heights, Elwood and Lapel) coming from Madison County, the three individual golfers who will advance will come from one of those six teams.
“I think Lapel and Pendleton Heights have girls capable of getting out and I know Alexandria has a player or two,” said Windlan.
Two of the girls were regional qualifiers a year ago — Lapel’s Shelby Meyer and Pendleton Heights’ Lauren Patishall.
“Lauren plays really well at Grandview,” Taflinger said. “She shot an 82 at Grandview and was medalist in the Madison County Tournament.”
“If she plays up to her capability she is capable of advancing,” said Maryan of Meyer. “She had a rough Saturday in the conference, but she came back and worked pretty hard.”
Lapel’s JoJo and Jill Gentry are both capable of putting up a number that would get them into next week’s competition.
“Those three kids like this course,” said Maryan of the Gentry twins and Meyer. “They are comfortable there and play it well.”
The Arabians also have two other players with good chances as individuals: Yvonne Pullman, a German exchange student, and Ashleigh Wise.
“Yvonne is up and down,” Taflinger said. “She hits the ball as well as anyone I’ve seen. But she doesn’t like to get up early and play in the cold, so we’ll see how that goes.”
Alexandria’s Melissa Montgomery is the Tigers’ No. 1 player and very likely to be in contention for one of those top three spots as well.
The three other area teams, Shenandoah, Daleville and Madison-Grant, go to other sectionals. The Raiders and Broncos will visit Crestview Golf Course in Muncie for Saturday’s sectional. The Argylls go to Huntington also on Saturday.
“On paper, I would say that Delta, Yorktown and Muncie Central are the teams for us to beat,” said Shenandoah coach Jason Hornaday. “We lost to Delta by seven shots on their home course.”
The Raiders, who won the White River Athletic Conference tournament last Saturday, are led by three strong players, Hannah Cordle, Jessica Starks and Mariah Smith.
“Cordle has been playing really well the past couple of weeks and has been scoring between 38 and 42,” said Hornaday. “Starks has been striking the ball well, but her putting has been atrocious. Smith has been steady for us all year.”
The Muncie South champion will also feed into the New Castle Regional.
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Area golfers face uphill battle
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