Girl golfers not as strong at state

Published 3:00 pm Wednesday, June 11, 2003

It can be tough to live with high expectations.

In 2002, the South Whidbey High School girls golf team placed second in the state with a team composed entirely of underclassmen. Conventional wisdom would have — and did — pick them as the team to beat in 2003.

It was with the weight of this expectation that two Falcon girls traveled to Pasco’s Sun Willows Golf Course May 29-31 for this year’s state 2A golf tournament.

Having taken four girls to state last year, the Falcons were legitimate contenders. This year, with just three — juniors Hailie Mansfield and Jennifer Pan and senior Adrienne Hawley — the possibility of a title was more remote. As it turned out, they took fourth place behind champion Othello. Individual play, not so much team play, became the emphasis.

The surprise of the event was Mansfield. After playing regularly in the Falcons’ No. 3 spot for much of the season, she broke out at the District 1 2A meet the week before to qualify for state. At Sun Willows, she played two career rounds of 18, tallying an 88 on the tournament’s opener that Thursday and a 91 for the second and final round. Her total score of 179 gave her seventh overall, six places and 27 strokes better than her finish in 2002.

Laurel Williams of Pullman was the medalist at the tournament, winning with a two-day total of 156.

After her first state experience as a sophomore last year, Mansfield said she was better able to focus her mind on her game.

“I think this year I was a lot more concentrated,” she said.

On her first day on the course, Mansfield was able to put it together in all aspects of her game. But for the final round, she said she had to rely on her short game after some of her tee shots fell afoul.

However, her coach, Tom Sage, said there were no negatives to her game.

“She had her best two outings of they year,” he said.

Pan, who went into the tournament as the top-seeded golfer from South Whidbey’s district, did not have the same success her teammate did. In 80-degree-plus temperatures and put in a foursome with three other top seeds, her game melted down a bit after dominating throughout the regular season.

“I’m not really a hot weather kind of player,” Pan said of her performance.

Still, her two-day total score of 200 was a one-stroke improvement over 2002. The score also gave her 20th place for the tournament.

The team’s lone senior, Adrienne Hawley, fell into bad luck in the first round. Though her 102 would have been good enough to make the cut at last year’s tournament, it wasn’t quite low enough to make the 100-stroke cut this spring.

Sage, Mansfield and Pan all said they have high hopes for next year’s tournament. They finish the season as co-champions in the North Cascades Conference and district champions.