The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Northern Junior back after year away, features strong field again
FAIRFIELD — The Northern Junior is back after a year’s absence and looks as strong as ever.
New Haven Country Club returns as the site for the 19th annual championship.
The 36-hole tournament will be held Tuesday and Wednesday. Milford’s Ben James will be going for the three-peat.
“The Northern Junior is so special, but we wondered if we cancel it (last year) will you be able to do it again next year? You don’t want to cancel it one year, lose all the hard work you did all of those years previously and the kids forget about it,” said Brent Paladino, one of the tournament’s organizers.
Paladino, who works for the United States Golf Association in championship administration, said the Northern Junior tournament committee waited as long as it could before cancelling the tournament in May of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The championship was going to be held at Great River GC.
“It was really heartbreaking to cancel it. I was also going through the same thing (at work) when the USGA canceled 10 championships,” said Paladino, who was working at the U.S. Senior Women’s Open being held at Brooklawn Country Club. “If we had known everything, we probably could have held it. But at that time in the middle of May, people were in lockdown. We couldn’t play golf in New Jersey (where Paladino lives). It was hard to envision kids traveling, getting rental cars and playing tournament golf.”
Headlined by James, who is committed to play at the University of Virginia and just placed second in the Connecticut Open on Wednesday, the field is 111 strong, from 26 states, provinces, countries, “about what it normally is”, Paladino said. It started as a one-day event on the Connecticut Section’s Junior PGA calendar in 2002 and has grown big enough to have two qualifiers.
But bringing an A-list junior field together is secondary to the tournament’s primary objective.
“At the end of the day, it’s not really the driving factor to get the strongest
field we can have. We make sure we provide the best possible experience and make a really good impression on those kids whether they are the top players or one tier below,” Paladino said.
Both of last year’s Borck Junior champions, Jackson Roman and Mia Scarpeti, are competing in the Northern Junior. There are several members of the GameTimeCT all-state boys golf teams this past high school spring season who are competing: Matt Downes (St. Paul), Brad Sawka (Ellington), Marc DeGaetano (New Canaan) and Jake Ivan-Pal (Notre Dame-West Haven).
Sophia Sarrazin of Hamden Hall Country Day, the 2019 Borck champion, is one of three state girls competing in the 36-hole championship.
The winners get exemptions into a number of national junior championship events.
BORCK JUNIOR
The 52nd Borck Junior will not only crown new champions this year, but also add a new course to the rotation.
Silver Spring CC in Ridgefield is the site of this year’s championship, which begins Monday. There are 54 boys and 15 girls competing this year in the championship in honor of Jay Borck, an accomplished junior golfer who died at age 16 in 1968. The Borck family created a Fairfield County event that would allow golfers of all levels, including beginners, to compete in a tournament format.
The Borck family and the CSGA came to an agreement during the tournament’s 50th year in 2019 to allow the CSGA to operate the event and expand to a statewide championship.
This year, the Borck is competing on the same exact dates as the Northern Junior.
“In a perfect world, we would never conflict with the Northern Junior or any other significant junior event,” said Mike Moraghan, the executive director of the CSGA. “But it is hard to do that with the AJGA, the Junior PGA and the Met Juniors. Throw it anywhere on the calendar and it will conflict with something. The Northern Junior does draw an excellent field, but still draws a lot from out of state. We have practically a full field. Numbers are up from last year.”
That will include the reigning Connecticut Junior Amateur champion. Glastonbry’s Connor Goode defeated defending champion Matt Doyle in the final held July 23.
Among members of the GameTimeCT team competing for the boys title are Goode, Alex Elia (Ridgefield), Jon Bushka (Notre Dame-West Haven), Brett Chodos (Amity), Luke Stennett (Portland), Dan Casanta (Pomperaug), Colin Firda (St. Joseph), Charlie Dolan (Glastonbury), Luke Karpiej (Hale-Ray) and Will Huntington (Fairfield Prep).
Also competing on the boys side is Cam St. Pierre of Shelton while his older brother Kyle, who just graduated from Shelton High, is playing in the Northern Junior instead.
Mia Holbrook and Maxie Marin represent the host club on the girls side. Ava Gross (Amity) and Molly Mitchell (New Canaan) are among the contenders for the title.
Monday’s round of stroke play will reduce the boys side to 16 and girls to eight for match play beginning Tuesday. The two championship finals will be held Wednesday afternoon.