Sweet Home’s golf team hosted its first home tournament this year, but it wasn’t home sweet home for the Huskies.
“We did not play well at all, for being on our home course,” Coach Pat Davis said. “The weather was not good, but considering the competition, it would have been nice to play better.”
Sweet Home finished fifth out of six teams, all of the others 5A or 6A schools except for Central – the one team the Huskies outscored.
Michael Tolle led Sweet Home with an 89, with Steven Bishop second at 91.
“Those are bad numbers for both of them,” Davis said.
Bryce Daniels shot a 95, which is right about where the coach said he expected him to be, while Brenner Roberts finished with 105 as the Huskies were once again short-handed, one player less than the five allowed in a varsity match. The top four scorers’ numbers count in the final score.
Sweet home finished with a 369. Sprague won the event with a team score of 348, with Woodburn and Canby tied for second at 348.
That was where Davis said his team should have been.
“We hung with the bigger schools, but we should have played much better than we did on our home course,” he said. “It was disappointing. I would have expected to be in the 345 to 350 range.
Sweet Home did better the week before. On Monday, April 21, the Huskies played at Bandon’s Old McDonald course, the first time this year they’ve had five varsity players on the turf at the same time.
Bishop shot 88 after finishing the front nine with a 39. Tolle and Chris Melcher finished tied at 90 and Daniels at 91. Roberts came in with a 101, despite pouring rain on the back nine after fairly pleasant weather for the first nine holes.
“Brenner shot a 10, a nine and an eight on the front nine, then parred the other six holes,” Davis noted. “It took him five shots to get out of a sand trap.”
The Huskies finished fifth out of 12 teams with a 359. Eagle Point won with a 334, their top scorer shooting 80.
On April 16, they finished second out of 10 teams at a Creswell tournament at Emerald Valley.
“The boys played great,” Davis said. “We only had four players, but they all played really well.”
Bishop led with a season-low 77 to place third out of 50 golfers. Tolle shot 80 to finish fourth after a tie-breaker. Daniels finished with 92 and Roberts with 94 to finish with a team score of 343, just three shots behind Oakridge and ahead of Cottage Grove, which had beaten them twice before.
The junior varsity team played at Oakridge on April 18 in a three-team nine-hole tournament, finishing second. Aaron Blanchard shot 52, “by far the best JV score of the year,” Davis said.
“Long holes, tiny, tiny greens – 52 is a great score for that course.”
The Huskies play at Quail Run on April 30, then will host another home tournament at Mallard Creek Monday, May 5.
This will be a scramble format that will match the No. 1 and 4 players on each team, No. 2 and 3 and No. 5 and 6. They will play the best shot.
“The quality these players are, they should be parring or birdieing most of the holes,” Davis said. He’s hoping for six or seven teams, including Cottage Grove, Junction City, La Pine, Lebanon and possibly Stayton and Oakridge.
Also, he’s inviting students from the high school to some watch their classmates play at the 15th hole, in which golfers drive from an elevated tee to a hole far below, which makes for dramatic play.
“We want to get the Rowdy 40 from basketball out there,” Davis said.
The junior varsity will play at Middlefield in Cottage Grove Friday, May 2, then hold its own tournament Tuesday, May 6, at Mallard Creek.