Moberly places 11th in golf tournament
Kris Childs - April 7, 2010Moberly’s Golf team competed in their first tournament of the year Tuesday at Lake of the Woods golf course in Columbia. Moberly competed with some of the best schools in the state featuring 4A schools Rockhurst, Rock Bridge, Hickman, Helias, and Jefferson City.
Moberly took 11th place overall out of 14 teams, the scores were as follows:
Rockhurst- 309
Rock Bridge- 312
Hickman- 326
Washington- 330
Camdenton- 331
Helias- 332
Chaminade- 333
Jefferson City- 347
Kirksville- 353
Southern Boone- 353
Moberly- 355
Rolla- 360
Smith-Cotton- 360
Mexico- 382
There were 69 total competitors in Tuesdays match.
Wilson Sundvold of Rock Bridge took first place in the tournament shooting 73 (+2). John Geho of Rockhurst was the runner-up ending with a 73 as well. Moberly’s Mark Loeber finished 6th overall shooting a 77 (+6). Other Moberly scores were as follows: Jared Martin 88 37th, Dustin Backe 94 53rd, Eric Campbell 96 59th, and Lincoln Schopp 102 66th.
After the match Moberly Golf Coach Jason Hannam said, “I have to be honest and say that Mark’s performance today may have been one of the best ever by a Moberly Spartan boys golfer. For him to go out and shoot 77 on a golf course he’s never seen before, the way the wind was blowing today, against the best competition we’ve ever seen, was simply outstanding. Sundvold is one of the best players in the state, not to mention in Class 4A, and Mark was within 4 shots of him. If you look at the guys in front of him they were all from Class 4A schools and Rockhurst and Rock Bridge are among the best teams in the entire state regardless of class. This field that we played in today is at least as good as the field at the Class 3A State Championships, so it’s very encouraging for him.
“Overall, I was very disappointed in our team performance today. To have the sixth best player in the tournament, but only manage to beat three teams, that’s just not good enough. I would not have expected that we could compete with Rockhurst, Rock Bridge, and maybe even Hickman, Helias and some others, but we certainly should have shot better scores and had a chance to beat several of those teams that beat us today. This is why I feel it’s so important to play against this type of competition, because it simulates district and state caliber play, which we hope to be more competitive at in the future.
“My coach always used to tell us that you learn a lot more when you play poorly than when you play well. Hopefully we learned some lessons today about what we need to begin to expect from ourselves. If you’ll remember in our first match of the season, we shot 157, which translates to a 314 team score in an 18-hole tournament. To go out and shoot 355 at the point, with this team, and the experience we have…we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Moberly’s next match will be against Hannibal at Timber Lake Golf Course this Thursday, April 8.