Sep. 14—MIDDLEBURY — As scores rolled in Saturday at the Northern Lakes Conference Meet at Meadow Valley Golf Club, the winner was seemingly going to get by while being absent of its best performance this season.
Northridge head coach Ken Brewster seemed to agree, the course was equally challenging across the board Saturday afternoon.
“We’ll come back out next week and get ready for sectionals and we’ll put on hopefully a better performance if the golf course doesn’t win,” Brewster said after his Raiders were named conference champs for the second-consecutive season with a team score of 344. “That’s what I’m going to write in my X post, I think the golf course won today, but at least we brought home the championship.”
Northridge junior Alex Reschly led the individual standing with a 1-over-par 73, winning her first NLC tournament medalist honors.
“I was keeping score of everyone so I knew where I was the whole time,” Reschly said, playing with Warsaw’s Abbey Peterson and NorthWood’s Sophie Richmond. “Abbey was actually beating me for most of the round so I didn’t really think I was going to win to be honest and then things just kind of went my way towards the end so I knew once I made the final putt I had won.”
Peterson, 75, and Richmond, 76, were the only other golfer to shoot in the 70’s, setting the top group clearly in front of the rest of the pack.
“I knew it would be pretty close because they’re both great golfers so I knew any of us could have a good day and win,” Reschly said. “It has always been one of my big goals and at the beginning of the season I wrote down some of the goals for the season and this was definitely one of them so it was really exciting to accomplish this for sure.”
Brewster watched his group, which has won six tournament titles this season, battle the course in yet another 18-hole match this week. Since Monday, the Raiders have played in two 9-hole matches and three 18-hole competitions with Friday’s Pat Ford Invitational win in LaPorte leading into the NLC meet less than 24 hours afterwards.
It may have been a hefty workload, but Brewster said his girls have encouraged that type of schedule.
“It mirrors the first week,” said Brewster, who was named NLC Coach of the Year. “The first week we had four tournaments right in a row and then played [the] State Preview [Tournament]. At first, it’s probably easier to do that as you’re fresh. This week may have been more of a workload than they needed.”
“They’re such competitors they want to play all the time, they want to see where they are at.”
Reschly tabbed the latest week of competitions for sure one of her busiest weeks on the green. Her head coach noted that it could be beneficial playing five-consecutive days as the state finals are just two days and 32 holes.
Northridge has one more competition set up for next week, but postseason play begins Friday when the Raiders return to Middlebury for sectionals. A trip to the state championship is more than a likely possibility for Brewster’s team.
Outside Reschly, the Raiders relied on scores from Lizzy Irving (86), Macey Riegsecker (87) and Addy Irving (98) to complete the total.
“I thought they battled hard today,” Brewster said. “Course played super tough as you can tell by the high scores from every team. They knew in the back of their mind it wasn’t their best day but they battled and they got every stroke they could and in the end that’s what matters.”
“This is a group that is just good at battling,” Brewster continued. “Even some of the scores don’t look that great, but they could have been so much worse so I’m just proud of the fight that they have.”
The rest of the top-10 individual scores included area athletes in Reschly, Richmond, L. Irving, Riegsecker, Joey Slone of NorthWood, Mahra Chris of Concord and Reese Beasley of Wawasee.
