By Duncan Nixon
Correspondent
High school golf in Virginia is normally a fall sport. This year, due to COVID-19, the golf season was moved to early spring. The Fluvanna County golf team had an impressive, abbreviated season, finishing with a 5-1 record in dual meets. On April 7, the Flucos hosted a seven team Jefferson District regular season final match over the difficult Lake Monticello course.
The format for high school golf matches is that each team enters its top six players and at the end of the match the four best scores for each team count in determining the winning team. Accordingly, with Fluvanna County, Charlottesville, Albemarle, Western Albemarle, Monticello, Louisa County and Orange County all competing, 42 golfers would have been expected, but Charlottesville only fielded a team of four, so forty golfers participated.
While the match was to determine the order of finish in the Jefferson District tournament, the Flucos were also involved in a match within the match. Coach Bryan Searcy explained that only four of the competing teams are in VHSL Class 3C and the top two of these four in this tournament go on as a team to complete in the Region meet. The two teams that do not make this cut send only their top four finishers who compete on an individual basis at the Region meet.
The Jefferson District meet was won by Western Albemarle with a four player score of 330. The Flucos finished fifth with a four player score of 380. The Flucos did not manage to come in second in the match within a match, as they were edged out by Monticello. Therefore, the Flucos will not compete as a team at the Region match but will send their top four players to compete individually. Those players are: Killian Donnelly, who shot 83 in the District match, the fifth best score, Jared Williams whose 87 was 11th best, and Cohen Purviance and Mason Chiovara. The other two competitor for the Flucos were Kessler Potter and Sarah Beth Robinson.
The high school golfers play from the regular men’s and women’ tees which are a challenging test. The boys playing from the white tees are confronted with a course of 6,296 yards. The girls playing from the red tee play a course of 5,350 yards. The Lake Monticello course is tight and it has quite a bit of water. There are no places where an errant shot can go into an adjoining fairway, as is sometimes the case even on courses played by the PGA pros. In fact, the starter at the first hole reminded the players that “there is out of bounds on every hole here.”
It is impressive to see how far these young athletes can hit the ball with various clubs. On the second hole, a short 315 yard par 4, Donnelly hit his tee shot to the front fringe of the green and got down in two for birdie.
It is certainly the hope of all concerned that these golfers will be back out competing in August/September of their year for the 2021-2022 school year.
