Veritas Christian's Taylor Zook lines up a putt. Zook, normally the No. 5 or 6 varsity player, was the Eagles' top golfer Monday at a meet that mostly featured Veritas' JV squad.

The entire Veritas Christian boys golf team was out of its element Monday at Lawrence Country Club.

And rightfully so.

With Veritas competing in another varsity meet today at Eagle Bend Golf Course, Veritas golf coach Greg Capps decided to give the junior varsity golfers some experience at the varsity level.

“It was good for them. We’ve got a new program, and we’re starting to build some depth,” Capps said. “This gives us a chance to have a few freshmen and eighth-graders come and play in a tournament with some good players and see what they have to do to develop. I hope it shows them how far they have to go and how hard they need to work.”

The Eagles finished third in the home quadrangular, with a team score of 448. Kansas City Christian claimed the team crown with a total of 328 – 64 strokes ahead of second-place Wichita Sunrise.

Veritas’ Taylor Zook typically sees action in varsity events, but Monday he was the No. 1 golfer on the team.

“Taylor normally plays as our No. 5 or 6 man, so it was a different setting for him, and it can be uncomfortable,” Capps said. “That can make it a little more stressful, but generally for us, the scores were pretty decent today.”

Zook finally let his game come to him for the final two holes.

Veritas’ No. 1 golfer parred the par-3 17th and did the same on the par-4 18th by setting himself up with a solid drive off the tee box. He finished with a back-nine score of 52 – and had a team-best 107.

“I played really bad on the front nine, and I didn’t play so great on the back nine, either, but I at least parred those last two holes,” Zook said. “But it could have been worse. I could have been in class.”

Blair Capps, who had a front-nine score of 55, also shot a bit better on the back nine to finish two shots behind Zook.

“I just got lucky on a few putts and chips and managed to do better than the front nine,” Blair Capps said. “The greens were a lot faster than I thought they’d be. We pretty much had to hit it just as soft as we could on the greens and hope that it didn’t run downhill at all.”

K.C. Christian’s Nathan McKenzie shot 5-over par on the par-70 course to win the individual title.