Courtesy of a resounding win at Okoboji View Golf Course, the Spirit Lake girls golf team is the 2011 Lakes Conference champions with a perfect 7-0 record. The Indians 178 team score was 46 strokes better than Western Christian’s 224. Cherokee rounded out the triangular with a 236. Maureen Owens fired a round of 39 to grab medalist honors, and teammate Emily Ayers was runner-up with a 44. Spirit Lake also counted scores of 47 from Whitney Berkland and 48 from Leah Hilpipre.
Their counterparts, the boys of Spirit Lake, also notched a triangular conference win Monday, shooting a 162 team total and besting Western Christian’s 173 and Cherokee’s 193. Teammates Matt Weeks and Scott Hummel tied for medalist honors with rounds of 39. A playoff determined Weeks as the top golfer and Hummel as runner-up. Spirit Lake also counted a pair of 42’s by Corey Potter and Zach Skopec
Graettinger-Terril/Ruthven-Ayrshire hosted this year’s Cornbelt Conference golf meet. On the girls side, Harris-Lake Park came up five shots shy of taking the team title behind North Sentral Kossuth/Armstrong-Ringsted, which shot a 449 to HLP’s 454. G-T/R-A came in fourth (483) and Clay Central-Everly fifth (573). Brooke Banwart of West Bend-Mallard was the meet medalist with a 101. Wolves’ senior Samantha Brueggeman carded a 105 to finish runner-up. Teammate and freshman Macy Gunderson had a 110 to join Brueggeman on the first-team all-conference list. Mariah Gath’s round of 113 earned her second-team honors, while Emily Anderson was honorable mention with a 126. The Knights were led by Kyla Dyer, who finished third with a 106. Kelly Harris was second-team all-conference with a 114.
As for the boys, West Bend-Mallard came away as conference champs in the Cornbelt with a 359 team score. North Sentral Kossuth/Armstrong-Ringsted was second at 367, followed by Graettinger-Terril/Ruthven-Ayrshire third (368), Harris-Lake Park fourth (369), and Clay Central-Everly finished eighth (418). Sawyer Doocy of NSK/A-R was the top golfer with a 72. The Knight’s Blaze Alesch and Dylan Smith were third and fourth, respectively, with an 85 and 89 to earn first-team all-conference honors. HLP was led by a trio of 91’s from Nathan Kyle, Austin Jacobsen, and Jacob Ihnen, all good for first-team selections. Eli Ihnen’s round of 96 and Connor Gunderson’s 99 put both on the all-conference’s third team.
