Riders finish 4th in WBL
KENTON — Thursday’s Western Buckeye League Boys Golf Tournament showed just how tough the league is.
The Roughriders finished runner-up in the annual tournament on Thursday — held this season at Kenton’s Memorial Park Golf Course — with a team score of 326, but placed fourth in the league standings.
St. Marys finished 6-3 in WBL dual matches and 7-3 overall, with Defiance (6-3) and Elida (7-2) tying for second ahead of the Riders with 16.5 points in the overall standings and Shawnee (8-1) winning this year’s league with 17 points.
It is the worst finish in the WBL standings for St. Marys — to no fault of its own — since finishing fifth in 2017. But the Roughriders lost by a combined six strokes in the three losses to WBL foes this season, including a fifth-score tiebreaker, 46-47, in the league opener at Defiance and facing a Bath team who happened to play its best golf all season.
“It’s pretty crazy isn’t it?” Roughriders coach Steve Schmitmeyer said. “We play Bath and they shoot their best round on the year by 14 strokes — they shoot a 156 against us and they play Wapak and they shoot a 195 — we lose to Shaw
nee by two and the Defiance debacle where a kid shoots us out. What are you going to do?
“But I’m really proud of the kids for hanging in there and keeping on the grind but now we are now going for the ultimate goal and we’ll see how that pans out in a couple of weeks.”
In Thursday’s tournament, Defiance won with a 321, followed by St. Marys and Elida with a 326, Shawnee with a 330 and OttawaGlandorf with a 336 to round out the top five scores. Schmitmeyer explained that the Riders beat the Bulldogs on a fifth-score tiebreaker to keep Elida from winning a second straight league crown.
“We have steadily improved almost every week, especially at home where we would shoot lower there,” Schmitmeyer said.
Elida’s Carson Harmon was named the league’s player of the year as he shot a 74. Teammate Hunter Joliff was the tournament’s medalist with a
73.
Andrew Moore led the Roughriders with a
75. In his first full year as the No. 1 golfer for St. Marys, Moore finished with First-Team All-WBL honors as well as Cole Koenig, who carded in an 84 on Thursday.
“Andrew has just been rock solid this year,” the coach said. “He had one bad outing at the Jordan Moeller Invite but other than that he has been Steady Eddie keeping it 1 over par or two over par so just one heck of a year by that kid. He worked hard this summer and probably played more golf than maybe any other kid and he got rewarded for it.”
Sophomore Calvin Caywood finished with a 79 to grab honorable mention honors as he improved from his 84 in last year’s league tournament at Elida as a freshman and has become a solid No. 4 golfer for Schmitmeyer’s crew this season.
“What can you say about Calvin, holy cow did he play today,” Schmitmeyer added. “I am really proud of Calvin for hanging in there. He had practice the other night and it was OK but it wasn’t what he was shooting for, but he just bore down today and got it done.”
Senior Reese Sweigart shot an 88 to close his WBL career and Dakoda Moore (94) and Brett Speckman (92) also competed on Thursday.
Sweigart has been a consist golfer in all four years under Schmitmeyer.
“Reese was just kind of a natural starting out and had a really good freshman year and a good sophomore year with all-league,” Schmitmeyer added. “But he just missed out last year and he just missed out this year and sometimes things just don’t bounce your way.
“And it seemed like Reese got his share of things bouncing the other way this year.”
Now the goal is to go to state as Schmitmeyer believes he’s got the team to make a run as every member from last year’s team that advanced to districts returns for the 2020 postseason run.
Division I sectionals will take place Oct. 7 at Mohawk Golf and Country Club. The top five teams will make it to districts, which is played at the Findlay Country Club a week later.
“If we can play our game, there’s no doubt that we will get through sectionals and I think we can get to state,” Schmitmeyer added. “We just have to do our own thing but if we get it in our head and start thinking negative thoughts — that’s kind of been these guys’ mantra a little bit — we just have to keep it to the grind and just worry about the next shot.
“If we can do that, I think we have a realistic chance of getting there.”
Team scores
1. Defiance 321; 2. St. Marys & Elida 326;
4. Shawnee 330; 5. Ottawa-Glandorf 336;
6. Bath 349; 7. Wapakoneta 370; 8. Van Wert 383; 9. Kenton 389; 10. Celina 398.