With three of the four golfers returning from last year’s regional squad, others back with varsity experience and a bunch of young players ready to play, the Durango High School boys golf team will have a lot of internal competition to prepare for its official tournaments this fall.
Senior Zach Griswold returns as a two-time state qualifier for the Demons. Senior Eli Holden, junior Owen Muraro and junior Bailey Burke are also back with varsity experience. With 41 players out for DHS, however, they’ll get pushed by their teammates for spots in the varsity lineup.
“We have a lot of returning guys from our regional team, a pretty good group of incoming freshmen and (a bunch of sophomores and juniors),” said DHS head coach Kirk Rawles. “We want to create some internal competition so there’s something on the line. We want to keep it fun, but create mini competitions here.”
The team was able to begin practicing on Monday, a week before the rest of the fall high school sports, and will play in its first tournament on Tuesday in Cortez.
On Wednesday, it held a qualifier at the Hillcrest Golf Club to help determine its team for Cortez.
Junior Ben Ogden shot a career-low 75 to win the qualifier, finishing one shot ahead of Holden. Freshman Drew Jepson finished third with a 78, followed by sophomore Carter Hansen (80), junior Ethan White (81), Muraro (82), senior Henry Howe (83), Griswold (84), freshman Roman Thompson (85), freshman William Newcomer (87), Burke (88) sophomore Colton Cheese (89) and sophomores Alex Elias and Austin Romero finished tied for 13th at 90.
The team has 10 players lined up to play in Cortez, and Rawles said he requested a few more slots because he can fit 13 players in the bus. The coach said the qualifier and the Cortez tournament will help determine which players get to compete in Grand Junction and Montrose the next week.
“The goal for the athletes is to have two solid performances in the qualifier and Cortez to go,” Rawles said. “You can tell pretty much out of the gate who has put the time in.”
DHS will host a pair of tournaments this fall, at Hillcrest on Aug. 30 and the Dalton Ranch Golf Club on Sept. 12, coinciding with competitions Aug. 31 in Cortez and Sept. 13 in Pagosa Springs.
The regional championships, meanwhile, will take place Sept. 18 at the Bookcliff Country Club in Grand Junction. The Class 4A state championships will also be on the Western Slope this year, at the Bridges Golf and Country Club in Montrose on Oct. 2. DHS will compete at the Bridges during the regular season, on Aug. 24, and plans to get some practice in at Bookcliff as well.
“The ultimate goal is to get them playing really well at regionals and hopefully get the team to state,” Rawles said.
Every time the boys met at the Hillcrest Golf Club to play over the summer, they got to see what’s possible if a team peaks at the right time: the state runner-up trophy the DHS girls golf team won the spring has been on display at the club while the high school was closed for construction.
“They had to look at that trophy every time they checked in,” Rawles said, adding that the greater community enjoyed seeing the trophy. “Everybody loved seeing that thing.”
With so many players out, and a no-cut policy, DHS will use a weekly nine-hole, match-play tournament to keep them all in the competitive mode. The players will battle head-to-head in the match-play brackets against similar players skill-wise, but they’ll also be on teams so their scores won’t just affect themselves.
“It’s a yearlong thing, so everyone can score for their teams,” Rawles said.
The coach and team seem excited to get out on the links and show what they’ve got.
“I’m really optimistic,” Rawles said. “I think we have some good new athletes coming in and some kids who got experience last year are coming back with a different mindset. That’s gong to help strengthen our team and build competition internally.”
colivas@durangoherald.com
