Watford City Golfers Qualify For State Tournament

The Watford City girls golf team had a full week of competitions this past week. Six girls traveled to Mohall on Tuesday for a tournament.

With three regular varsity players out of the line-up due to other extra-curricular activities that prevented them from attending, the Wolves were a little short-handed, but handled the situation very well.

The Wolves had their three girls who have consistently been their top three golfers in the line-up in Abby McCauley, Kendra Foreman and Jayden Uhlich. Seventh grader Quinn Voll stepped up to the varsity level for the first time to round out the four player squad to allow the team to qualify for a team score as a minimum of four players is required. The girls finished in third place overall behind Region favorite New Town and Stanley respectively. Des Lacs/Burlington, who was missing its top player, finished just behind the Wolves in fourth.

"New Town has been winning pretty much every area tournament and they were big favorites in this tournament, but we knew there were three or four more teams that were going to be in a dog fight for those second and third place positions," Coach Greenwood said. "We felt very good going into the meet. Our girls had a good week of practice. They were hitting the ball well on the range on Thursday night and felt confident that they could compete with anyone in our region."

Abby McCauley led the charge for the Wolves as she turned in an 18-hole score of 81, which was her best score of the season as well as a state qualifying score for the individual tournament and good enough to be tied for first place in the region. She lost a play-off to New Town's Hope Froshaug for medalist honors. Kendra Foreman followed the leaders with a third-place score of 87. "Kendra has been working very hard lately. She's taking the game more serious and putting in a lot of extra time practicing her short game. It's paying dividends for her." McCauley and Foreman each were named "All-Region" players for their top 10 finishes.

The Wolves had other strong showings as well. Jayden Uhlich carded a 109 for the third best score on the team while Olivia Gronos scored 111 which was 15 strokes lower than her previous season best score to add to the team score for the Wolves. Peyton Blotsky bested her low score of the year by one stroke by coming in with a 124 and Iida Lehto rounded out the team with a 158. The strong play by the Wolves was not quite enough to overcome New Town, but it was strong enough to make them Region 6 Runner-ups and qualify them for the North Dakota Class "B" State Tournament.

State will be held in Carrington on May 31-June 1.

Region 6 Coach of the Year- Linda Miller (DLB) Region 6 Senior Athlete of the