WEST CHESTER – The race for the Ches-Mont National boys’ golf title is just about as close as it can be with one regular season dual meet still to play for co-leaders West Chester Henderson and Downingtown West.
The Warriors cruised to a 194-212 victory over Bishop Shanahan Monday at West Chester Golf & Country Club to pull even with the Whippets at 9-2 in the division. To grab the program’s second National crown in three years, Henderson needs to beat Shanahan in a rematch later this week.
“It’s definitely our first goal,” said Joey Lynn, the squad’s only senior, when asked about the division race. “In my sophomore year we won it. For these guys who haven’t experienced it, I’d like to get it for them.”
If the Warriors can get it done against the Eagles (1-10 overall), Downingtown West needs to win Tuesday against Avon Grove (8-3) at Inniscrone Golf Club in order to get a share of the title it won a year ago. But according to Henderson head coach Mike Orenshaw, his team would win the tiebreaker.
That’s because the Warriors and Whippets split two regular season matches this year, which is the first tiebreaker. Each team won by three strokes, which is the second.
“I believe we have the tie breaker,” Orenshaw said. “(West) beat us by three and we beat them by three. So it goes to the scores of the sixth golfers. (West) beat us by one comparing the sixth golfers and in the other match we beat them by two.”
Henderson has now won five in a row since edging the Whippets on Sept. 9th at Downingtown Country Club. And even though the Warriors counted four scores in the 30s, it was probably the squad’s least impressive outing during the winning streak.
“This was not a great score for us today,” Orenshaw acknowledged. “It was probably our highest here this season. We had a few triple bogies, but still solid enough. It’s an OK score, but nowhere near our best.”
That would be a 182. But this time Lynn grabbed medalist honors with a 2-over-par 37 in his final home match.
“This is his home course and this was our last home match, so it was a nice round for him. He is the leader of this team and our captain,” Orenshaw said.
Lynn suffered a triple bogey on the par-2 second hole to go to 3-over. But the senior navigated the final seven holes in 1-under, including an eagle at the par-5 eighth.
“I hit a good drive just in the rough and had about 200 yards to the green,” Lynn recalled. “I hit a 6-iron to about 10 feet and made a good putt.”
Junior-heavy Henderson carded a trio of 39s by juniors Charlie Ball, Zach Evans and Tommy Gillespie, and another junior, Jack Schwinn, had a 40.
“We have a good group here. We didn’t play our best golf today, but we found a way to get the job done,” Lynn said.
“There is a lot of fight with this team. One bad hole doesn’t determine the round. Even if you are not having a good round, you have to go out with the mindset that your score is going to count.”
Orenshaw added: “We usually have a lot of guys between even-par and two- or three-over. We don’t have guys that go super low but we have good depth. Some of our junior varsity guys shot scores that would have counted today.”
It was a different story for Shanahan. Junior Pierce Drake and sophomore Riley Pawlik led the way for the Eagles with 41s.
“We are trying to figure things out. We are trying to mix and match them to see if that helps,” said assistant coach Matt Pawlik. “We have some young guys playing and they make some mistakes. We try to teach them to save strokes here and there because we’ve had matches where we are within five strokes.”
According to Matt Pawlik, eight of Shanahan’s 10 losses have been by five strokes or less. It’s important to note that the Eagles do not have a senior on the roster.
“We had a lot of balls out of bounds and some lost balls today,” Pawlik said. “That was a common theme, but for many of them, this was their first time seeing this course.”
West Chester Henderson 194, Bishop Shanahan 212
Par 35 at West Chester G&CC
Bishop Shanahan: Drake 41, Pawlik 41, Riccardo 42, Gatti 43, Griest 45.
W.C. Henderson: Lynn 37, Ball 39, Evans 39, Gillespie 39, Schwinn 40.
Source: Berkshire mont