East High Golf (State Edition) - Monday, October 17, 2022

On Monday, October 17, junior Jillian Hutchinson traveled to Salina to represent East High at the 6A KSHSAA State Golf Tournament.  She arrived an hour prior to her 9:50 tee time, only to find out that the round would be delayed an hour-and-a-half due to frost; she teed off at 11:20, but it was still cold throughout the day.  Despite this, Jillian was in good spirits as she started her round.  And even though her round didn’t start as well as she would like (triple-bogey on the first hole, a 58 on the front nine), she maintained her composure, bouncing back to shoot a 49 on the back nine (for the math-challenged, that’s a total score of 107 😊).  If you are a golfer, you know about those days where you’re just kind of fighting your swing and little seems to be going right.  That’s a bit how it was for her, especially early on, as she had multiple holes on the front nine with triple-bogey or worse.  But she hung in there and finished strong; she recorded scores of double-bogey or better on every hole of the back nine .  I was proud of her, and it was a great experience to build on for next year.

The state golf tournament is a two-day event, and in order to make it to the second day, you must play really well on day one to make the cut.  There were 55 golfers who made the cut.  Of those 55, two were from Garden City, one was from Dodge City, and one was from Campus.  The other 51 golfers were from schools east of Junction City, with most being from the Johnson County area.  It was an eye-opening experience to finally fully-comprehend how many good golfers there are in the Kansas City area.  Pretty amazing.  The tournament was won by a freshman from Shawnee Mission East, Ella Slicker, who shot 79-71 over the two days, and Olathe Northwest took home the team title.  If you’d like tosee the complete results for the tournament, click here.

Thank you for letting me provide these updates throughout the season, and I’m excited to see where our girls golf team goes from here.  There were no seniors on our team this season, and the girls that played have a lot of potential.  If they continue to work and improve, the 2023 season could be a lot of fun.  And for those of you who are sad to see these golf updates end, rest easy knowing that the first boys golf update will arrive in your inbox in early April, five-and-a-half short months away!  Until then…

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