Fox Chapel golf ends by letting PIAA Class 3A championship slip away

It’s going to take awhile before Fox Chapel boys golf coach Bryan Deal gets past his Foxes dropping into a playoff against State College before losing to the Little Lions Monday in the PIAA Class 3A championship.

“We had a three-shot lead with less than a hole to go,” Deal said. “We had two kids still on the course and one was just off the green 50 feet away and ended up making a six and the other bogeyed and we ended up losing three shots in a matter of two minutes.”

Though this was the Foxes second trip to Hershey in the past three years, the team has been one of the dominant programs in the WPIAL for nearly a decade. The Foxes have finished no worse than second in the district each of the past four years and six out of the past seven; the only exception being in 2017 when the team was involved in a car accident before the finals and had to play the junior varsity.

But the only way for a boys team to get to Heritage Hills in York for the finals is to win the WPIAL title. And going up against teams such as Central Catholic, Franklin Regional and Peters Township year after year, there is no guarantee even the best team can win given the conditions of the district finals at Cedarbrook.

That’s what makes the loss all the more frustrating.

“I’ve been doing this for 42 years and these opportunities are so rare,” Deal said. “Kids are resilient. I don’t know how many more opportunities we’ll have because it’s hard to get to the state and to legitimately have a chance to win. It’s harder to know that we beat ourselves.”

Fox Chapel will also have to retool a bit as five of the six starters from the WPIAL finals — Eli Yofan, John Walsh, Zach Paper, Owen Delaney and Max Johnson — are seniors. The only player the Foxes have returning is sophomore Davey Fuhrer, who shot a 1under 70 at Heritage Hills, including an eagle on the front nine.

“We lose seven seniors, four of which played at states, but that’s a long way off right now,” Deal said. “It’s hard for us to think about the future right now, but it is bright and we’ll just have to reload.”

An added bonus

Every so often the PIAA ends up with an opening for a team to fill in at the state golf championships.

Usually it’s because one of the girls teams that would have qualified didn’t shoot under the requisite 400 in its district tournament and had to be replaced.

Because of that, the WPIAL had two extra teams in the field in the girls tournament.

In Class 2A, Central Valley, which has won state championships in 2012-14 and 2016, was brought in to fill out the field and ended up finishing fifth, 66 shots behind champion Hickory out of District 10.

Things were quite a bit better in Class 3A where Peters Township made the most of its invitation to the dance. The Indians were in the hunt all day and leapfrogged WPIAL champion Fox Chapel for second place with a 238, just two shots behind champion Downingtown East.

As it turned out, it was the second consecutive runnerup finish for Peters Township. The Indians, who won the school’s first WPIAL title in 2020, shot a 236 and were four shots behind champion Unionville last year.

A 236 this year, though, would have sent Peters Township and Downingtown East into a playoff.

The Indians were led by senior Delaney Kern, who shot a 1-under 71 on the day, as well as senior Allison Poon with a 76.

A rare shutout

This is the first time since the PIAA split into two classifications in 2012 that the WPIAL has failed to win either an individual or team title in both boys and girls divisions in consecutive years. It is also the second time since the team championships were instituted in 2006 that the WPIAL failed to win either a boys or girls title in consecutive years.

There is, however, a caveat.

In 2006 and 2007, the WPIAL champion did not represent the district at the state finals. The first time the WPIAL sent representatives was in 2008 when the Peters Township boys finished second to Cathedral Prep and the Shady Side Academy girls defeated Mount St. Joseph.

No WPIAL girl has won a title in either classification since Caroline Wrigley of North Allegheny and Maddie Smithco of North Catholic swept in 2018. The last time the WPIAL went without an individual girls title for that long was a four- year drought from 2008-11, the year before the second classification was added.