Girls golf: Kaneland repeats Interstate 8 title
It was a truly a "Who's going to finish second?" kind of day at Sycamore Golf Club.
The Kaneland girls golf team ran away with a second consecutive title at the Interstate 8 Conference Tournament on Tuesday, with Knights junior Katharine Marshall claiming the individual championship by 10 strokes.
Kaneland finished with a team score of 349, followed by Sycamore (402), Ottawa (407), La Salle-Peru (425), Sandwich (467) and Plano (472).
Marshall carded 11 pars and three birdies on the day, finishing with a 1-over-par 72, while other counting scores for the champs came from Julia Skiba (83, fourth place), Aeryn Hwang (96, eighth place) and Grace Algrim (98, 10th place).
"I really putted great today," Marshall said. "I was able to make a few longer putts, including on No. 9, which really got me going, and I followed that up with a birdie on No. 10. I was 2 under on the back nine, and everything was just clicking.
"I don't normally pay a lot of attention to where I'm at in the standings, I just try and stay focused on my own game, but Coach was letting me know where I was at. I knew I had a pretty good lead on the back nine, but instead of looking for a personal lowest score, I was just trying to stay consistent and finish strong, which I was able to do."
Ottawa senior Zoe Harris finished runner-up after tying Sycamore's Brianna Chamoun with an 82 and winning a back-nine scorecard playoff. Also adding to the Pirates' third-place finish were Hannah Duggan (102), Caroline Cooney (105) and Brynne Sember (118).
"That thought is always in the back of my head ... 'I should have,' " said a smiling Harris, who only started playing golf last year, when asked about playing at an earlier age. "I said last year my goal was to just break 100, and now that seems really silly when I think about that. My dad and I put a lot of work in the summer for me to get better at the game, and it's really paid off. Katharine is such a phenomenal player, it was a race for second today.
"My driver was the most consistent part of my game, and with the big fairways here I was able to play my controlled cut a lot more than maybe another course. I was really confident in my game all day and was 6-over after 14, but I had a couple bad holes and kind of limped my way in.
"Overall, I'm really pleased with how I played."
Behind Chamoun's third-place finish, the Spartans received a sixth-place 92 from Lauren Cohn, a 110 from Lily Rubeck and a 118 from Isabella Kirchmann.