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Northview knocks off Clay City in match play clash
Coming off a disappointing conference championship tournament over the weekend, Northview’s boys golf team wanted to get back on track against its county rival Clay City on Wednesday evening at Forest Park.
And as Northview head coach Nick McCollum said afterwards, it was of the utmost importance to begin pushing the pedal to the metal as the sectional gets underway at Hulman Links Golf Course in just under three weeks.
So, even though the Knights and Eels were using match play as the scoring system in Wednesday’s battle, which takes out some of the importance in carding low scores, the first-year head coach was pleased to leave with a 10-0 win.
“This is go time,” said McCollum. “We didn’t have a great conference, which was probably the most frustrated I’ve been as a coach. Our guys did not perform at the level we know they can – and do – perform at … We know we have to pick it up if we want to win sectionals. We’re the favorites going in, but if we play like we did Saturday, we’re going to get beat. They know what they’ve got to do and we saw some good things tonight even though it was a different format. You’re not really playing for a score, but we still won 10-0, so we did what we’re supposed to do.”
Clay City head coach Clarence Johnson liked the way his group played for the most part as well, pointing to the No. 1 (Logan Stoelting), No. 2 (Bryce Wiram) and No. 4 (Zane Paddock) spots in the lineup for pushing their opponents to a full round of nine holes or close to it. He’s confident the match play style, which forced the Eels to look at the game in a different way, should benefit his team moving forward.
“Playing with this format, it’s just a different mindset that you have to go. Holes don’t carry over and neither do strokes. Really, strokes don’t even matter. If you have a seven on a hole, that’s fine as long as your opponent has a number bigger than a seven. You don’t have to think, ‘Oh, man. I’m four strokes down with four holes to go.’ You’re either up or you’re down or you’re square,” said Johnson. “We had some matches that only lasted five holes, but we had one that played seven holes, one played eight holes and another played nine holes. So, for us not having a team last year and getting back into the swing of things, I didn’t think we fared too poorly in this format.”
Wednesday’s match against Clay City also was Senior Night for Northview. McCollum and assistant coach Chris Hawk honored Lane Notter, Kamden Kellett, Porter Frederick and Cade Thompson after the victory, marking another chapter in the quartet’s book of memorable moments.
And while the post-match ceremony served as a time for looking back and bringing up memories, McCollum made sure to let his group know that they still have more work to do to ensure they are celebrating again at the beginning of June.
“This has been a special group. I’ve been with them since they were freshmen, so I’m sad to see them go even though I know they’ll all do great things,” said McCollum. “We still have a couple of weeks to go, and we still have a lot to do and prove.”
Match play results – Lane Notter (Nv) def. Logan Stoelting (CC) 7 & 2; Kamden Kellett (Nv) def. Bryce Wiram (CC) 8 & 1; Porter Frederick (Nv) def. Luke Laswell (CC) 5 & 4; Cade Thompson (Nv) def. Zane Paddock (CC) 8 & 1; Aydan Green (Nv) def. Brayden Wiram (CC) 5 & 4; Lincoln Pierce (Nv) def. Gabriel Campbell (CC) 5 & 4; Parker Lutes (Nv) def. Noah Dayhoff (CC) 5 & 4; Fischer Dickison (Nv) def. Elijah Tieker (CC) 6 & 3; Jarod Shepard (Nv) def. Kaden French (CC); Avery Kirkpatrick (Nv) def. Jack Michl (CC)