November 2, 2006 Issue                                       

Click Here

©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Mount golf wins State Championship
by TOM UTESCHER

Mount St. Joseph Academy Golf – 2006 PIAA State Champion (left to right): Coach Will Reilly, Carson Price, Co-Captains Christen Kouch and Victoria Arena, Emily Gimpel, Nicole Weinrich, Athletic Director Janet Columbro. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

YORK, PA - As the Mount St. Joseph Academy golf team’s van rolled westbound along Route 30 two weekends ago, it passed an exit for a town called Mountville.

Last Monday and Tuesday, the District One champions would establish their own “Mountville” about 20 miles to the west in York, PA, where Mount St. Joe won the 2006 PIAA Team State Championship. In two 18-hole rounds on the par-72 course at Heritage Hills Golf Resort, seniors Christen Kouch and Victoria Arena, sophomore Carson Price, and freshman Emily Gimpel posted a team score of 724 to defeat the second-place squad by just five strokes, and claim the school’s first state championship in any sport.

Interestingly, the runner-up team, which hails from Erie, PA and is the District 10 champion, bears the same name as one of the Mount’s local rivals, Villa Maria Academy. Both the Mount and this western Villa Maria are run by the Sisters of St. Joseph.

All the competitors had to brave cold, windy weather throughout the event, and bundled-up players and spectators made a fashion statement more in keeping with a Thanksgiving Day football game than a golf outing. In the final round on Tuesday, the Magic overcame a four-stroke lead that the Villa Maria Victors (an all-senior squad) earned the day before.

“These girls reached deep down today,” said an emotional Will Reilly, Mount St. Joe’s first-year coach. “At one point it looked like we were 20 shots out of it.”

The four Mounties were supported by sophomore teammate Nicole Weinrich, on hand as the Magic’s designated alternate, and by a hardy band of parents.

MSJ’s Arena, the individual district champ, had been part of a four-way tie for the state championship back in 2005. That tournament, also played at Heritage Hills, was only a one-day affair, as torrential rains that followed the first round forced the PIAA to cancel the second day of competition.

It was drier in York this year, but on both days of the event temperatures were in the low 50s and strong winds raked the course. Arena had come down with an intestinal virus just before the tourney, and food did not sit well in her stomach throughout the championships. The only member of the Mount team who had qualified to play for the PIAA individual title (while also participating in the team competition), Arena emerged as the bronze medalist with a score of 155.

The state champ turned out to be Sarah Bejgrowicz, a senior from Manheim Township High School in nearby Lancaster. On the second day she shot the only under-par round of the tourney, a 70, which set her up with an impressive final score of 145. In second, just ahead of Arena, was senior Margaret Pentrack of Shady Side Academy near Pittsburgh, who carded a 154. Bejgrowicz and Pentrack tied for ninth place in the 2005 tournament.

The ailing Arena found herself having to play catch-up after shooting an 80 on in the opening round on Monday.

“I haven’t shot in the 80’s since the beginning of the season, or maybe even back in the summer,” she admitted Tuesday afternoon. “It was really upsetting, but that definitely made me want to play better today.”

It was on the last nine holes in the final round that she would overtake a number of players who’d started out above her on the leaderboard. At the turn, her mother, Chris, handed her a Coke, and that seemed to settle her stomach. Arena reached the club house with a 75, recording the best score of any player on the back nine, a two-under 34.

“On the back nine I just kind of ‘found it,’ and then pulled it together,” related Arena, whose short game perked up on the second day of the tournament. “I parred number 10, and I had a bogie on 11. I had some pars, then when I got to 15 I sank a huge putt for birdie. After that I parred 16 and birdied 17 and 18.”

Kouch, the Magic’s other co-captain, shot a 96 on Monday, then struggled mightily on the first nine holes of her second round (Arena and the other individual qualifiers played the course in the regular order, while the other team players started out on the tenth hole). Her score was 57 at the turn, but despite her frustration and disappointment, she took ten strokes off that figure on the final nine holes to finish with a 104.

The Magic’s talented rookie, Gimpel, came in with an 85 on the first day. Although she had to cope with the gusty wind on Tuesday like everyone else, her score of 92 gave her a total of 177, better than all but one player for the rival team from Villa Maria.

Price, the Mount sophomore, hadn’t been happy with the way she’d played on Monday, when she turned in a score of 100. Coach Reilly felt that she, like the other players, benefited from the calm, steady leadership of Arena.

“Victoria is a rock,” he stated. “She had the quiet confidence that held the team together overnight. The girls look to her, and she never panics. Her approach was, if you didn’t do well on the first day, no big deal. Put it behind you and play hard tomorrow. It’s one thing to hear it from your coach, but when Victoria Arena says to somebody ‘This is it,’ they really listen to her.”

On Tuesday morning, another dose of nasty weather magnified the significance of the Mount’s four-stroke deficit in the team tally. Many players saw their scores blow up during the second day, and as the results came in, the Villa Victors were on the verge of celebrating back at the clubhouse.

MSJ’s Price was on the course, though, and she’d taken her game up a notch from the day before.

The sophomore observed, “I think I was more nervous yesterday. Today, I think I was more used to the conditions, and I was also hitting my irons a lot better.”

However, as she worked through the back nine, she wasn’t aware of just how close the team scores had become.

“Then I saw everyone on the last hole all kind of standing around,” she recalled, “so I was like, ‘What do I have to do?’ So I just tried to play the best I could to finish strong. It was a lot of pressure, actually.”

After the tenth grader parred her final hole, MSJ’s Reilly remarked “Carson Price shooting a 92 is literally 10 shots lower than we thought she’d shoot in these conditions. She had to do it, and she knew she had to do it.”

Summing up the performance of the team as a whole during the tournament, the Magic’s mentor stated, “When you have to do something under pressure in poor conditions and you do it, it’s worth more than doing it on a warm Sunday afternoon.”