St. Charles schools take Tri-Cities bragging rights
Bill Koehn taught and coached boys golf at Geneva High School for more than three decades before retiring in recent years.
But Koehn was uneasy about certain aspects of the long-standing rivalry between his beloved Vikings and Batavia High School.
"I know Bill's motivation for this event was that there was some animosity between Geneva and Batavia," said St. Charles North boys golf coach Rob Prentiss.
Monday morning and afternoon at Geneva County Club, the four Tri-Cities high schools kicked off the first official day of the 2015-16 athletic school year with their annual Ryder Cup-style competition pitting archrivals Batavia and Geneva against the two St. Charles high schools.
Playing three different nine-hole formats of team four-ball, alternate shot and singles matches, the two St. Charles high schools eked out close wins in the partner events.
But the Saints and North Stars were 14 points better in the individual matches to secure a 152.5-135.5 victory in the eighth edition of the McChesney Cup.
"What a great concept to come here to a historic place," Prentiss said. "It's like a celebration of high school golf in the Tri Cities."
Tyler Barton, an incoming junior, has been anointed the top player for St. Charles North this fall.
Barton was victorious in all his matches on Monday.
"I think it's really cool to bring everybody to play together," Barton said. "(The formats) all challenged us. The alternate shot was cool."
St. Charles East returns two members - Mike Bertke and Daniel Haugen - from its Class 3A state-qualifying unit from a year ago.
When augmented by top-rated sophomore Danny Beutow, the Saints will seek more postseason honors this season for veteran coach John Stock.
"This is just a great event to start the season," Stock said. "The (closeness of the) alternate shot and four-ball (SCN-SCE won 73.5-70.5) showed that there's a lot of quality golf in the Tri-Cities."
"My hat's off to Bill for coming up with this event seven years ago," Batavia coach Tim DeBruycker said of his coaching rival from the Suburban Prairie, Western Sun and Upstate Eight conferences. "(He and I) felt like we needed something to bring the two teams together."
Batavia will be led this fall by returning state qualifier Andrew Nelson and fellow seniors Nick Robinson and Michael Morrison.
Geneva will count on Andrew Abel, Spencer Monroe and Ethan Dalton to anchor its fortunes.
"Both myself and coach (Bryan) Knapp have a unique experience with this event because we both played for Bill Koehn," Geneva coach Eric Hatczel said. "As former players, whenever we see Batavia we want to beat them. But in an event like this, the amount of camaraderie was special to see."