»CROSS COUNTRY: Northwestern soph doesn’t wilt under tough conditions
Earlier in the season Shawnee coach Ken Brust wanted to get at least two of his players into the district tournament. But after Kenton Ridge failed to field a team this season and Shawnee beat Carroll during the regular season, Brust started thinking bigger.
“I told the girls, hey I think we have a real shot at fourth and maybe even third,” said Brust, whose team finished fifth at sectional last season behind KR and Carroll.
“When you have a four-player team every player has to be on every night. We don’t have a No. 5 player to pick up another girl.”
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They didn’t need it Monday. Isabella DeMayo finished third as the highest-scoring freshman with an 18-hole total of 88, four strokes behind Alter senior and medalist Colleen Werbrich. Shawnee junior Elly Deerwester finished ninth with 93, junior Reagan Speas tied for 14th with 99 and freshman Maleah Tucker, who started playing competitive golf during the summer, was 31st with 111.
Tucker started the season shooting 9-hole totals of 74.
“She broke into the 60s and now she’s shot high 50s, which is ideal,” said Brust, adding Tucker started taking lessons every week last fall. “We’re trying to get some more kids involved for next year. It’s just tough.”
The Braves are safe for team competition next season. Brust admits he’s concerned about finding players once Deerwester and Speas graduate in 2019. He plans to lead a junior high physical education class on golf basics in an attempt to generate interest. Last season spring Brust and his players visited the junior high to talk about golf, too.
“It was blank stares except for Isabella,” Brust said. “She was so excited to talk about playing golf. Maleah didn’t show much interest but she got out playing with her brothers and became interested. She has kind of learned on the fly.
“If we have a student, either boy or girl, interested we have enough clubs and bags that were donated that we can give them a set of clubs. We’ll revisit it again in the spring and hopefully we can get one or two kids out of every class.”
Shawnee finished second to Bellefontaine in the Central Buckeye Conference’s Kenton Trail Division. The Braves finished 13-2 overall and 4-2 in the league, with its only losses to the Chieftains.
DeMayo led the CBC in scoring average with 42.9, with Deerwester right behind at 45. Speas finished at 52.2 and Tucker 60.6.
“We’ve got a nice core and the kids are great. The top three girls are as good as any girl in the CBC,” Brust said. “Maleah, her game has improved by leaps and bounds. … They kind of felt at the beginning of the season they were pretty good. Going to matches walking around the course I’d have parents or other teams ask how old Isabella is. I’d tell them she’s a freshman. She gets your attention.”
Brust said Shawnee started girls golf in the 1990s and there have been three or four seasons since then where there weren’t enough girls to field a team. If that happens in the next couple years DeMayo could play with the boys team. Shawnee had seven players last year.
“There’s a real concern,” Brust said. “It’s not like it hasn’t happen before. It happened to Kenton Ridge this year. Golf hasn’t been around that long relative to other girls sports. It’s not something that’s a death knell to the sport at Shawnee, but it hurts continuity. It’s just one of the trials of a small-revenue sport.”
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