It's Fremd, by a stroke

Monday's Mid-Suburban League tournament had a little bit of everything.

There was a 3-hour rain delay, a hole-in-one, an impressive score on the back nine, and a battle for the meet and conference championship that came down to 1 stroke at Arboretum Golf Club in Buffalo Grove.

Coming into the Invite, Barrington, Fremd and Hersey were all tied with a 10-1 record. Whichever of those three teams posted the lowest score on Monday would be the conference champion.

Fremd was able to edge Barrington with a total team score of 313 to 314 to take the conference crown.

The Vikings were paced by junior Sean Jones, whose 76 was the best score of the day, and senior Kyle Bahnick, who shot a 35 (1-under par) on the back nine to finish with the third-best score of the day at 78.

"Going into it you don't think about it," Bahnick said of his performance. "I grinded. I was marking all my 2-footers, and I just grinded all the way in."

Bahnick said on the sixth hole he posted a quadruple bogey. He was able to par the rest of the front nine on his way in, where he was able to regroup and talk to his coach, who told him to just keep fighting.

In between the front nine and the back nine was when the rain delay took place - most players were in the process of playing their 10th hole of the shotgun start when they were forced off the course.

Bahnick said the break might have helped him focus a little bit, and shake off his quadruple bogey from earlier in the day.

"Just sitting back and kind of analyzing what I did my first nine holes, I was a little frustrated," Bahnick said. "So I went out there (after the delay) and said, 'Kyle, just go for it.' I was just trying my hardest."

It seemed like the weather delay had little impact on any of the golfers, but Fremd coach Josh Teschner had an interesting thing for his team to do during the downtime.

"We took a car ride," Teschner said. "We were going to try to find somewhere to hit, somewhere inside. We couldn't think of anything, we weren't going make it to an indoor facility in Palatine, so instead we just drove around, got each other laughing and stayed loose."

Jones said he just put the weather conditions out of his mind during his round.

"The attitude you have to bring into that is everyone has to deal with it, so you just go out there and play," Jones said. "Our coach really convinced us that it suited us best and that it was our advantage in the rain and everyone believed it and went out and played great in the afternoon."

Hersey's Johannes Seemann shot an 80 on Monday, a good score. But he had the shot of the day, sinking an 8-iron for a hole-in-one on the seventh hole.

"I threw my club up in the air, and was just like, 'Oh my God,'" Seemann said. "All the people in my group were like, 'Did that just go in?' And they started cheering."

It was the first hole-in-one for Seemann.

"It was a great feeling, I never knew what it felt like," Seemann said.