Flames win Sac-Joaquin Section golf title

Steve Wolf’s earliest involvement in Lodi High golf was when his brother Kenny helped the team win a Sac-Joaquin Section title as a player in 1961.

Wolf didn’t play for the team himself, playing football, baseball and basketball at Lodi from 1964 to ‘67, but he took over as the team’s coach in 1977 and guided them until retiring in 2008, when Jim Staal took over.

With Staal’s death from heart failure in 2021, his wife Tara Staal added the boys team to her coaching job with the girls golf team. At the same time, she brought Wolf out of retirement to be her assistant.

On Monday, with Wolf laid up in bed with health issues, the Lodi High boys golf players gathered around him in his living room and showed him their new section title banner, won earlier that day at The Reserve at Spanos Park in

Stockton.

“For them to do what they did today is just so much fun to watch for Tara,” Wolf said. “And all the kids contributed. It takes people trying to take your job to make you work harder. That’s the key to success, the depth, and we had about 8-10 kids that could have played for us this year.”

Lodi won by a decent margin, scoring 362 as a team. Granite Bay and Rocklin tied for second at 374. All three teams will advance to the NorCal Tournament next week in Berkeley.

Lodi had four players under or around par on the par-72 course, with Cedar Burns and Jack Main tying for a teamlow 71, followed by Timur Alalin with an even-par 72, and A.J. Salvetti with a 1-over 73. Jack Tophan carded a 75, and Trent Munson a 79. Wolf said it was the lowest he could remember a team scoring at the section meet.

Staal said the feeling was indescribable.

“The smiles were huge. I was so proud of those guys, I think they were proud of themselves that they all came together at the same time to do this,” she said. “Steve has helped us out these last couple of years, and he’s dealing with some health issues, and the boys said it was for Steve. So it was pretty important. When they saw those scores going up, they were just ecstatic.”

It was the Flames’ first section title since 1994, when it was called the D1 championship. The team won Division I South titles in 2007, 2014, 2015 and 2016, with a section masters runner up in 2016.

Lodi’s win on Monday came a week after Lodi placed fourth in the Division I tournament.

“First of all, playing at Haggin Oaks (last week), that obviously wasn’t our home turf, where the teams that finished ahead of us, that is their home turf,” Tara Staal said. “Some of our guys have

never played there at all. This week, they’re on our home turf. We play this course, and the kids know how to play it with any kind of conditions — windy, rainy, whatever.”

Staal said her team plays at Spanos about once a week, more often on the front nine than the back. She credited the depth of the team with the victory.

“That’s the reason we won. In these kind of tournaments, when you get to this level of play, you’ve got to be even-par or better, close to that through the whole team,” Staal said. “One person goes wrong, you’re not gonna win the tournament. It’s key to have depth on your team. You always have one, two or three guys that can go low, and that fourth or fifth guy make a difference, the sixth guy if there’s a tiebreaker, that score matters too.”

The Flames will be back in action next Monday at Berkeley Country Club, battling against teams from the Central Coast Section, Oakland Section, North Coast Section, Northern Section and San Francisco Section.

“The kids reached their goal. Now it’d be nice to go to Berkeley and play well,” Wolf said. “You’re going over there against some schools like De La Salle, and they’re loaded. But there’s no telling what you can do.”