CHSAANow

Category: Boys Golf

  • Trinidad’s Peters wins final Tri-Peaks boys golf tournament as St. Mary’s claims league crown

    Peter Stinar St. Mary's boys golf
    (Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)

    PUEBLO — At times it looked like the greens at the Pueblo Country Club had gotten better of the Class 3A Tri-Peaks boys golfers. For the most part anyway.

    Heading into the final league meet of the year at the Manitou Mustang Invite, a three-way race was on for individual medalist honors as Jimmy Clark (Lamar), Lance Peters (Trinidad) and Peter Stinar (St. Mary’s) were all in contention.

    With a six-over-par 77 Peters came away the winner of Monday’s tournament, but it was Stinar’s 81 that held up against his previous scores of 72 and 74 to come away with the individual league championship. St. Mary’s also claimed the team title.

    He may have been the last one standing after three tournaments, but the day clearly belonged to Peters. He was two-over through the first three holes, which many believe to be the toughest stretch that PCC has to offer.

    He made the turn at one-over before shooting a 41 on the back nine.

    “I was just trying to put myself in good positions, not put myself in to hard spots,” Peters said. “I could save reasonable scores and you can’t get above the hole on this course.”

    The country club can be a tricky course. There are no water hazards anywhere on the property, but the primary defense is the speed of the greens.

    After watching several putts blast by the cup early in a round, hitting with the flat stick can become the biggest mental hurdle the players have to overcome through the course of the day.

    “You just gotta make sure you are going to make that putt when you step up to it and have confidence going in on that,” Stinar said.

    Jimmy Clark Lamar boys golf
    (Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)

    He had breathed a sigh of relief at the conclusion of the round. He entered the day one stroke behind Clark for the league lead. He bogeyed the first two holes of the day before making par on five of the next seven to make the turn at four-over.

    But Clark was in trouble early. His opening tee shot went out of bounds and his problems snowballed as he made double-bogey on his first three holes.

    He turned in a cleaner scorecard on the back nine, but the early damage wasn’t enough to let him hang on to a league title, something he knew was going to be tough from the start regardless of where the tournament was being played.

    “All these guys are really good, Peter can straight play,” Clark said. “You have to just give it to him. He played great today and held it in there.”

    The next focus for each golfer at Monday’s tournament is regionals which are set to be complete by Sept. 27. This final league tournament served as great prep on many levels for the players. There was still competition to be had and the difficulty of the course demanded greater precision in all shots.

    “It’s really great mental prep,” Clark said. “It just kind of shows that even on an off day, you can maybe squeak into regionals and it kind of gives you some confidence that way.”

    Peters agreed with that assessment and is feeling considerably more confident after winning the Mustangs Invite.

    “I’m good with my wedges, my putting and off the tee I’m not feeling too bad,” Peters said. “I think it’s all going to come around.”

    Stinar, Peters and Clark all finished in the top 31 individually at last year’s state tournament and are looking to get another crack at coming away with a medal. This 3A state tournament will be held at Eisenhower Golf Course on the grounds of the United States Air Force Academy.

    Lance Peters Trinidad boys golf
    (Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)

  • Whidden leads Durango golf victory at Dalton Ranch Open

    Putts didn’t drop for Ethan Whidden on Monday at Hillcrest Golf Club. They did in bunches Tuesday at Dalton Ranch Golf Club.

  • Jeffco boys golfers tackle tough Bear Creek Golf Club

    Arvada West junior Tyler Tyson chips out of trouble on the par 4 No. 11 hole Monday at Bear Creek Golf Club in Lakewood. (Dennis Pleuss/Jeffco Athletics)

    LAKEWOOD — It’s not even September, but Monday’s boys golf tournament marked the midway point of conference play for the Class 5A and 4A Jeffco League.

    On the toughest of the six courses of the Jeffco League tournament schedule, Chatfield senior Max Heupel soared up 5A individual standings with a strong 1-over-par, 73. Heupel was six strokes better than Arvada West’s junior Zach Tyson and Valor Christian’s tandem of Logan Byler and Lucas Schulte, who all shot rounds of 79.

    Heupel is tied with Lakewood sophomore Max Lange atop the 5A Jeffco individual standings. Valor widened its lead in the team race over second-place Ralston Valley and third-place Lakewood.

    Lakewood junior Ryan Liao chips onto the No. 16 green during his round of 80 Monday at Bear Creek Golf Club. Liao had a hole-in-one on the No. 7 99-yard par 3 to highlight his round. (Dennis Pleuss/Jeffco Athletics)

    Defending 5A Jeffco individual medalist — Lakewood junior Ryan Liao — shot a round of 80, but did have one of the highlights with a hole-in-one on the No. 7, 99-yard par 3.

    On the 4A side, Golden’s Grayson Flambures took the individual title with a round of 80. The Demons also edged Evergreen by six strokes in the team race. Golden and Evergreen are locked in a tight race for the conference team title. The Demons are one stroke ahead of the Cougars with three league tournaments remaining.

    Evergreen’s Clayton Whitton and Jack Mitchell are currently one-two in the overall 4A Jeffco individual standings. Green Mountain sophomore Ollie Gibbons is third, Flambures and Conifer junior Dakota Dolph is tied for fourth.

    The final three Jeffco League tournaments are scheduled for Indian Tree (Aug. 30) West Woods (Sept. 9) and The Broadlands (Sept. 17).

  • Photos: Jeffco League boys golf invitational at Bear Creek Golf Club

    Chatfield’s Max Heupel was the top individual, and Valor Christian lead the way as the top team, at the Jeffco League boys golf invite held at Bear Creek Golf Club.

  • Photos: Jeffco League holds boys golf event at Deer Creek

    Valor Christian boys golf won the Jeffco 4A/5A League event at Deer Creek on Tuesday. Ralston Valley’s Jack Larson was the individual winner.


  • Jeffco boys golfers hit the links at Deer Creek GC

    LITTLETON — A 7:30 a.m. shotgun start for the second boys golf Jeffco League tournament Tuesday morning allowed golfers to avoid temperatures the 90s at Deer Creek Golf Club.

    The defending Class 5A Jeffco League medalist — Lakewood junior Ryan Liao — actually wasn’t at the second conference tournament of the season. Liao was in New Jersey playing in the KJ Choi Foundation Junior Championship.

    Lakewood is primed to be in contention for high individual and team accolades this fall. Liao is back after placing fourth at state last season. The Tigers finished second at state in the team standings, five shots behind Fossil Ridge.

    “We are really driving toward that state championship,” Liao said during the CHSAA Media Day on Aug. 9. “We want to get Coach G (Alan Gonzales) one. He deserves one. That is the main goal for us.”

    Lakewood coach Alan Gonzales has guided the most consistent boys golf program in Jeffco for the past several years. The Tigers placed second in the 5A state tournament in 2014, 2015 and 2018 to go along with a third-place finish in 2016.

    Lakewood sophomore Max Lange won the first medalist title in the opening Jeffco League tournament Aug. 12 at Applewood Golf Course. Lange shot a round of 65 for a six-shot victory. Lakewood junior Noah DiBiase and sophomore Jace Wright gives the Tigers a legitimate shot at the program’s first team title.

    “My team has really stepped up their game. It relieves a lot of pressure on my part,” Liao said. “Of course I want to go for the (5A Jeffco League individual medalist) again, but the main thing is the team.”

    Ralston Valley and Valor Christian will likely be right on the Tigers’ heels in the race for the conference title that concludes with the final league tournament Sept. 17 at the Broadlands.

    On the 4A side, Evergreen will be the favorite with senior Clayton Whitton leading the way for the Cougars. Jake Dekoker and Jack Mitchell gives Evergreen not only a chance for another conference team title, but a chance to be in the mix for the 4A state title.

    Conifer junior Dakota Dolph and Green Mountain sophomore Ollie Gibbons — both finished in the top-20 at the 4A state tournament last season — look to break into the top-10 in 2019.

  • Front Range golf tournament experiments with complete digital scoring

    Montrose Invite boys golf
    (Tom Hoganson)

    The Front Range golf tournament that was played at Riverdale Knolls this past Wednesday was yet another sign that high school athletics are moving further into the digital age.

    Horizon coach Mitch Dean and Mountain Range coach Tom Norfolk were on the front lines to shift away from paper scorecards and keep scores entirely on the iWanamaker gap.

    The hope at the end of the day was that scoring would be more accurate and play, with awards to follow, would speed up. Dean couldn’t have been happier with what he saw as the tournament played out.

    “It never slowed the course down at all,” he said. “As a matter of fact, it was very efficient because kids did not have to stop and record scores, which they always do. They can move immediately away from the green to the next tee box and record the scores while they were walking and talking. That was a huge benefit. The other benefit for us as punishment officials was we had the results at the tournament before the last kids walked off the course.”

    Typically, adding up scores and sorting through scorecards can keep kids and coaches around a course for an additional half-hour or so. Dean said that wasn’t the case with this tournament. Within five minutes after the final group came off the course, the awards ceremony had started.

    Fairview’s Ryder Heuston won the tournament shooting a 4-under-par 67. Fossil Ridge claimed the team win.

    The tournament is part of a larger movement towards golfer-only scoring the CHSAA golf committee hopes will take hold in the state.

    “This year is an effort to change the culture in how we score golf in high school to the concept of golfer-only scoring and scoring attest,” said CHSAA associate commissioner Tom Robinson, who administers golf. “The CHSAA golf app allows for this important accountability with scoring golf. If, in the future, it can be incorporated into the scoring for all of our high school events, it can create a number of positive outcomes in an effort to have accountability with live, visible scoring, to have players not afraid to share scores with each other, and overall to have a fair and acceptable system for scoring in golf.”

    Typically, there has been resistance to the idea of moving high school golf scoring completely to iWanamaker. The method is not used in college or at any professional level and making sure that there is someone will to track scores and provide updates has not always gone smoothly.

    “We know there are potential issues with this system because not all golfers in the group will have a smart phone, but the hope is to have at least two smart phone devices in each group, and therefore the scoring attest can be done on various devices,” Robinson said. “The same scoring and attest can also be done with a paper scorecard, if need be, and all golfers will have one of those.”

    Dean noted that there was one coach at the tournament that pushed back on the idea, but he and Norfolk explained that they wanted to make this move and see how it played. Coaches made sure each group had a kid with a working smartphone and put someone in charge of posting scores.

    The first question that comes to mind is how accurate were the numbers. Scorecards were still kept primarily as a backup and everything was checked at the conclusion of the tournament.

    “We had the coaches sit with their players afterwards and validate every single hole,” Dean said. “So if there was a discrepancy on the scorecard from what was on the iWanamaker app, they resolved it right there. We also had the official scorer in the group, one of the players who also was there to say, ‘This is what you told me, this is what we marked down.’ So, and there were no problems, not a single issue with scoring (Wednesday) and everything was very smooth.”

    This doesn’t mean that iWanamaker will be the primary scoring method moving forward, but experimenting with it and having a successful certainly suggests golf could continue to move it that direction.

    From the accuracy of the scoring to the instant availability of the results, this Front Range tournament could turn out to be a pivotal point when it comes to scoring and tracking Colorado high school golf tournaments.

    “We were really happy was the results,” Dean said. “We had 164 players yesterday at this event, which is too many on what the course could realistically accommodate. But we were able to move it right along and keep the scoring up to date. We knew throughout the entire tournament how players were doing and parents could get on there and look as well and see how their son was doing.”

    And that can be big for a parent who is stuck in the office on a Wednesday and can’t be there to watch those birdie putts drop.

  • Fall sports athletes got an education in social media from the Broncos

    (Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)

    Social media can be a tool for success or a detriment to one’s growth through their desired activity or profession.

    That’s what Denver Broncos senior strategic communications manager Seth Medvin spent time telling the high school athletes that made their way through the Pat Bowlen Fieldhouse. During the CHSAA and Denver Broncos fall sports media day, Medvin provided a lecture on social media use and how to use it in a way that is responsible and positive.

    “The unique thing with social media training for high school athletes is they’re exposed to it than even pro athletes are right now,” Medvin said. “We’re getting rookies in that were very active on social media when they were in high school. Athletes coming out now, they’ve been on social media since they were in maybe elementary school. It’s important as they’ve had much more experience in it that the education is more important at a younger age because it sticks with them and it really is their digital footprint.”

    It’s something that the players might be told about from time to time but getting a thorough lesson about the dangers of social media and how to protect themselves served as a bit of a wakeup call.

    The levels of play might be different, but the lessons learned can transcend those levels. Social media posts can fuel intensity before a game or cast a player in poor light when simply looking at typed words with no context.

    Thaddaeus Dewing Air Academy boys soccer
    (Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)

    Medvin’s goal was to to show young players hoping to have a future in their sport of choice how to be preventative when it comes to getting into trouble with Twitter or Instagram. And it was a message that a lot of the kids paid attention to.

    “I think it was a great thing for us,” Hoehne lineman Antonio Moltrer said. “As kids, we’re going to do dumb stuff. This helped us open our eyes to make sure we don’t (do those dumb things).”

    Medvin didn’t hold back on his examples. He pointed out current professional athletes and referenced their draft stock ahead of teams digging into their social media pasts. The tweets that were uncovered were less than flattering.

    And the consequences that followed were jarring. Rather than being a first round pick, this guy went in the fourth. With that came a salary difference of this many millions of dollars. And he stressed that even if a kid’s future isn’t in professional athletics, those things can still come back and cause havoc when finding a job or applying for schools.

    The coaches in attendance were also appreciative of the message. Sometimes with high school athletes – or even just kids in general — a lecture from a coach or a teacher can be disregarded fairly easily. When the Denver Broncos deliver the message, however, they tend to perk up a bit.

    “I think it’s great exposure,” Otis volleyball coach Bonnie Wallin-Kuntz said. “These kids are living in a glass bubble and everyone is looking at them daily. I don’t think they realize that people are watching and looking. They have to be aware of it.”

    And they need to be aware of it now. As group after group sat in front of a projector and listened to Medvin, his passion and emphasis never eased. Every football player coming through the facility would love to play for the Denver Broncos. But that path doesn’t begin after it high school. It doesn’t begin during a college football career. It starts with the little things these kids are doing right now on a daily basis.

    “What they do can affect them tomorrow,” Medvin said. “These kids are coming and going into colleges. I’m sure these colleges are searching for social media profiles. It is so easy to find negatives in their accounts, but it’s also really easy to build a positive profile and start the positive use of social media at a young age.”

    When jokingly asked, several players said they didn’t have to jump online and delete any posts after listening to Medvin. It’s a good start, but the hope is that the message sinks in even years down the road.

    (Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)

  • Photos from the Cheyenne Mountain Invitational

    COLORADO SPRINGS — The Cheyenne Mountain Invitational was on Monday at the Country Club of Colorado.

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  • Arapahoe boys golf’s Matthew Wilkinson isn’t one to crack under pressure

    Arapahoe boys golf Matthew Wilkinson
    (Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)

    COLORADO SPRINGS — Arapahoe sophomore Matthew Wilkinson has barely spent time behind the wheel of a car. On the golf course, however, he drives the ball just fine. He wasn’t on the Warriors roster for the 2018 Class 5A tournament but, early in the 2019 he looks primed to take one of those spots.

    This summer his game was good enough that he earned a spot in a prestigious national junior tournament that may have given him the spark he needed to compete with the best Colorado has to offer.

    His game got him down to the Miami and the junior Optimist International championship at the Doral.

    He didn’t win, but he notched a top-20 finish in the boys 14-15 division to give his confidence a major boost heading into the 2019 boys golf season.

    “It gave me good, positive vibes coming off it,” he said. “It makes me feel how with how I’m playing and how I’m getting better.”

    He got the chance to put that talent on display at the Cheyenne Mountain Invitational on Monday at the Country Club of Colorado. He shot a 3-over-par 74 to finish sixth at the event. Arapahoe edged Cheyenne Mountain by two strokes to bring home the team title.

    Wilkinson’s 74 was best of the Warriors and just two strokes behind Cheyenne Mountain’s Carter Surofchek and Gabe Marmon. The teammates went back on the course to settle their tie and it was Marmon who won via sudden death on the third playoff hole.

    Even as a sophomore, Wilkinson was quick to understand how essential it was to get on a tough course early in the season and battle against competitive teams.

    “It helps us,” Wilkinson said. “This is one of the toughest courses we’ll play all year and if we can play well here, we can play well anywhere else.”

    Perhaps his most understated point is that playing in a tournament like the Optimist, he felt like he gained a good grasp on dealing with pressure in a high-level tournament. He was within striking distance heading into the final round of the Optimist, and even if he didn’t claim medalist honors, he gained enough experience to help him thrive this season, even as an underclassman.

    “Playing under the pressure was key,” Wilkinson said. “You don’t realize how much it affects your golf game in general when you have to play well in a big tournament.”

    It helped him early as he found himself two-over through three holes. He battled back to get back-to-back birdies on No. 2 and No. 3 (he started the day on hole No. 16) and work back to even. He was one-over heading into the final hole before coming away with his only double-bogey on the day.

    With a team win under its belt, Arapahoe will head to the Cherry Creek Invitational on Tuesday and try to build on its early success this season.