Sweet Home’s boys finished fourth out of nine teams in a golf match held April 15 at Shadow Lake in Eugene.
Host Marist, a favorite for this year’s 1A/2A/3A/4A state championship, won the event ahead of Woodburn and Stayton.
The Huskies finished with a team score of 398, led by Brayden Keesee, who scored 88. Rounding out their score was Kolton Ertsgaard with 98, Chris May with 99 and Alex Kisselburgh with 113. Fifth for Sweet Home was Carson Smith, with 118.
Conditions were not ideal – the last half of the match was played in mostly driving “sleety sort of” rain, Coach Pat Davis said.
Stayton, which appears to be the team standing between the Huskies and a state tournament berth, finished with 356.
“They kind of widened the gap,” Davis said. “We had been closing it. That is who we are looking to chase down.”
With the district tournament fast approaching, on May 6-7 at Tokatee, the Huskies will need to cut their scores down.
“If every kid drops five strokes, now we’re in the ball park,” Davis said.
Sweet Home had a chance to play the district course Monday, April 22, though Davis said he expected to be missing at least two varsity regulars.
The Huskies played in the Robinson Memorial Tournament there, which did not involve any other district teams.
“It’s not like (Tokatee) will be foreign to the other (district) teams, but we get a practice round,” Davis said.
The girls also played at Shadow Hills on April 15, but the only other team was Marist and, due to the driving rain, they only played nine holes.
“It was a great course,” Davis said. “They got wet. The last half of the round, it was pretty nasty.”
Brook Womack was the low scorer for the day, with a 64. Maren Weld had a 68 and Lexi Schilling 69.
On Thursday, the Huskies played at Aspen Lakes in Sisters, in a two-person scramble format.
Womack and Schilling finished with a 99, and Weld and Rebekah Fassler with 103. Freshman Bailey Womack teamed up with a “good” Sisters player to finish with a 92, including a 39 on the back nine, Davis said.
The field was about half Bend-area 5A schools, along with Sisters, Stayton and the Huskies, who were “right in the middle of the pack,” he said.
“It was a good showing. The girls had fun and they liked playing there. They liked the format. They enjoyed themselves, playing against some good competition at the 5A level on a dry course at elevation. That was just a good experience.”
The girls were scheduled to play at the Oregon Golf Association course in Woodburn Monday, April 22, followed by a match at Diamond Woods in Monroe on Thursday, April 25.
Davis said he expected the nine-team OGA tournament to give the Huskies a pretty good idea of where they are at in the 4A/3A/2A/1A pecking order, though all the other schools were from other distrticts.
On Monday, April 29, both the boys and girls will host an invitational at Pine Ridge Golf Course in Marcola, with Cottage Grove, Junction City and Stayton. Boys play starts at 10 a.m., followed by the girls at 11:30.
The JV boys played last week at Agate Beach in Newport and will compete Wednesday, April 24, at Middlefield in Cottage Grove.