Lawrence golfers eager for regional

Lawrence High boys golfers have plenty of confidence heading into today’s eight-team Class 6A regional. Last week, they posted their best round of the season, and they also have home-course advantage.

The Lions, along with Free State’s boys golf team, will tee off at 9 a.m. today at Alvamar public golf course.

At the LHS Invitational on Wednesday, which was also at Alvamar, the Lions posted a team score of 324, which was the best among their regional opponents. The top three teams today will earn a trip a state, along with the top five individuals from schools that don’t qualify.

“I love it. It’s my home course,” LHS junior Dawson Dykes said. “I work here. I’m here all the time, almost every day. So it helps me a lot.

“I think it’s a big advantage. I mean, there’s definitely other teams that know the course but to know how to play a hole and when to be aggressive and when not to be aggressive really helps.”

The Lions have been led by Dykes, sophomore Cole Brungardt, junior Braxton Olson, senior Brent Cahwee and sophomore Garrett Wildeman for most of the season.

“We’re starting to play better as a team now that we’re bunching scores,” LHS coach Dirk Wedd said. “We don’t have the 74, 75 guy, but we’re starting to get those 80, 81s, and bunching them. That’s how we’ll get to state if we can do it Monday.”

“We’ve been really competitive because we’re all pretty equal,” Brungardt added. “We try to beat each other, then it makes our team better. All of our scores (at the LHS Invitational) were within two strokes of each other, so we’re all getting better, and we’re all right there. It’s good to see.”

The Firebirds struggled at the LHS Invitational last week, especially with their putting. But they hope they’ve pushed their bad rounds out of their system. They are led by junior Jack Flynn, sophomore Jack Junge, freshman Tate Steele, senior Coleman Houk and senior Matt Siler.

Though the Firebirds are plenty familiar with Alvamar, they don’t think it will be a huge advantage for them.

“It doesn’t hurt us, but it certainly favors Lawrence probably a little bit more because they’re out here more often than what we are,” FSHS coach Matt Gudenkauf said. “But we’ve got to play better on Monday.”

At the beginning of the season, most of the Lions struggled to keep their scores in the 80s. Now they just want to make the most of their opportunity to earn a spot at state.

“They had so far to come since the first day,” Wedd said. “They’ve just done a good job of coming every day and getting their work in and having a good time. They’re an unbelievably fun group to work with because they’re loose, as you can tell. They don’t usually put much pressure on themselves.”