Columbia stormed through the IHSA Class A Valmeyer Regional, shooting a 304 on the Acorns Golf Links outside Waterloo to take top honors. The score was 16 better than Nashville in second and 36 better than Marissa in third. It was a good day.
The sectional tournament a week later was another story.
The Eagles shot a combined team score of 326 to finish in seventh place in the Carterville Sectional, 11 strokes behind third-place Robinson and state qualification.
“We played OK,” Columbia coach Tom Detmer said. “We didn’t play as well as we had been for the previous couple of weeks. We had been playing pretty well and for us it was a little bit of a disappointing finish.
“But you have to look back at the big picture, the whole body of work. We had a really outstanding season and we just didn’t finish it off. This was the year we could have finished it off.”
The Eagles had started the season with an inexperienced group and after an autumn racing ahead of schedule, that lack of seasoning seemed to catch up to them in the sectionals.
“Hopefully it will lead into our kids learning something,” Detmer said. “We were pretty young and we did not respond or control our emotions as well as we had throughout the season. Self-discipline, learning how to handle that situation, is something the kids are going to take away from it.
“The kids had played so well all year and exceeded expectations, played above their youth. They didn’t show any of it up until that one point, but that was where that inexperience really showed. That Monday morning before the match you could tell that it wasn’t the same group that I had most of the season.”
With freshman Michael Barker, sophomore Nathan Leingang and juniors Joey Bert and William Pirtle all returning, the Eagles have a lot to look forward to.
And they won’t be flying under anyone’s radar next year.
“Casey Jahr and Alex Donovan were our two contributing seniors,” Detmer said. “They were rotating out in the No. 6 position most of the year, but we return our top five leading scorers and should have a good year.
“It’s like anything else – if you don’t get any better, things won’t happen for you. That’s what we have to do, we have to work to improve and hopefully we will get better. It is the confidence to excel, knowing you are going to hit the shot when you need to hit it. You understand that you are going to hit bad shots and you have to have the maturity to know how to handle the situation and grind it out a little better. I think that is the big key.
“From a skill level, our kids have gotten to a pretty good point, good enough to advance. Now it is just about course management and consistency. You get that from playing more in the spring and summer leading up to it, there will be the telltale signs.”
