Geneva trends in right direction at Glenbard East invite
On a perfect weather day, the Geneva girls golf team wasn't quite perfect. But the Vikings were pretty darn close.
The Vikings placed three golfers in the top six - including occupying the top two spots - to easily win the Glenbard East Lady Rams Invitational at Glendale Lakes with 323 strokes.
Freshman Reese Clark fired a 2-over-par 73 to lead Geneva, while junior Avery Frick was the runner up with 74. Another freshman, Kaylin Johnson, finished sixth with an 80.
"I think we've been approaching around like this the last two weeks," Geneva coach Doug Ross said. "I think we've been kind of trending in this direction. Practices have all been going well, the girls are getting closer together, so they know what's possible and it's just a matter of time (that) it will take to creep down to the number that is a goal for us this year."
For Ross and his charges, that number is 320, and it was oh so close Saturday. But there is plenty of season left to nail that down. Saturday was about taking the next step toward that goal.
"I think honestly it was my mental game," Clark said of her performance, a personal best. "I was talking to a couple of people lately and they've been getting me in the mood to play good golf and they've been telling me a lot of things I should be thinking about, my swing and my putting."
York took second in the team standings with 354 strokes by placing two golfers in the top 10 - Cassie Sika with an 86 and Bella Bartolone with an 87, good for ninth and 10th place, respectively, Elle Borchardt chipped in an 88.
Not bad, considering - in Bartolone's opinion, anyway - greens that were pretty hard.
"They were pretty fast, and I didn't have a straight putt a lot of times, it was right-to-left and left-to-right and I couldn't get off the tee as well I wanted to," she said. "We had three girls in the 80s, which was awesome."
The biggest surprise of the day? Lake Park, which finished third in the team competition behind a seventh-place finish from Victoria Hocuk. She fired a personal-best 80 despite dealing with a 102-degree temperature. She was well enough to record 3 birdies on the front nine and 7 total.
"She's sick today and she said she was going to grind it out," Lake Park coach Jeff Henrikson said of Hocuk. "I was proud of her to get those birdies. I understand she hit flags out a couple of times out there, almost put in a hole in one."
Wheeling got a quality performance from its sister act of Adrienne and Samantha Rohwedder. The former finished third with a 77, while the latter took fifth at 78. As a team, the Wildcats took ninth with 397 strokes.
Sandwiched by the Rohwedder sisters was Wheaton Academy's Margaret Harmon, who shot a 77, which was good enough for fourth place.
"My drives were great, right down the fairway, my up-and-downs were good, my irons weren't great, but like I said, my up-and-downs really saved me," Harmon said. "Par threes were great, par fives were great, I birdied the first par five."
St. Francis took fourth as a team with 367 strokes, and was led by Elizabeth Grivetti, who fired an 85, which placed her eighth. Elk Grove was fifth with 379 strokes, with all four scoring players in the 90s.