By Chris Bennett
Correspondent
The Elkhorn Area High School girls golf team struggled Sept. 18, finishing fifth of seven teams at the Southern Lakes Conference meet at Hawk’s View Golf Course in Lake Geneva.
Union Grove won the conference title with a team score of 409 on the 18-hole course. Elkhorn tallied 440 strokes.
The Elks entered the tournament as the defending conference champion.
Burlington finished second (419) and Waterford third (420). Westosha Central placed fourth (421) and Wilmot sixth (447). Lake Geneva Badger finished seventh (489). Delavan-Darien did not field a team.
“Hawk’s View’s a tough course,” Elks coach Steve Fisher said. “They built a good course over there. It’s challenging. Not to make excuses, but sometimes it evens things out.
“We were okay. Looking at how we did the whole season we were about where we should be.”
Hannah Grobelny led the Elks with a 106. Fisher said the score is high for Grobelny, and that she suffered from, specifically, three bad holes. Sarah Rowe finished at 107.
“I was really happy with how (Rowe) played,” Fisher said. “If the other girls could have helped those two out we would have fared a little better.”
Sally Lesniak shot a 113 for Elkhorn. Audrey Entwistle finished at 114 and Riley Shirk carded a 118.
Union Grove’s Paige Murdoch and Mari Suokko led the field. Each shot a 94, but Murdoch won the tiebreaker for medalist honors.
“When you don’t win you’re disappointed, but we kind of knew what we were up against,” Fisher said. “With the schools ahead of us, it was a challenging year and a challenging day on Tuesday.”
The challenges continued for the Elks. The Elks played Wednesday in the WIAA Division 1 Janesville Craig Regional at Riverside Golf Course in Janesville. Details and results will be in next week’s edition of The Independent.
The Janesville Craig Westosha Central regional tournaments feed into the WIAA Division 1 Lake Geneva Badger Sectional Tournament.
“As I looked at the two regionals it’s kind of like good news and bad news,” Fisher said. “The bad news is we go to Riverside. The good news is I think the other regional is deeper than the one we’re going to.”
Elkhorn competes against Lake Geneva Badger, Beloit Memorial, Burlington, Fort Atkinson, Janesville Craig, Parker and Milton in its regional.
In terms of average team score Elkhorn ranks fifth in its regional. The top four teams in the regional advance to the sectional tournament, as do the top four individuals with the highest scores who are not on one of the teams that advanced.
“I’m hoping we can get the whole team to go on,” Fisher said. “We’re going to have our best. We have yet to do that.”
