BEDFORD — Saturday’s Bedford North Lawrence Invitational at Otis Park Golf Course featured a challenging 18 holes for the majority of participating golfers.
Columbus North coach Doug Bieker felt the Bull Dogs had a shot at winning the invite if they would have been able to duplicate Tuesday’s performance in a win over Bedford at Harrison Lake Country Club. However, North fell 21 strokes behind first No. 11-ranked Floyd Central, who finished with a 311.
The host and 10th-ranked Stars finished second with a 323, followed by the Bull Dogs with a 332 and Jasper with a 344. Columbus East tied with Seymour at 356, but the Owls won the tiebreaker by the fifth golfer’s score which put the Olympians at sixth out of 15 scoring teams. Jennings County tied with Paoli at 361, but lost the tiebreaker to finish eighth.
“Conditions were certainly difficult, but it was the same for everybody,” Bieker said. “With a lot of young kids, you’re going to have some inconsistencies, and that’s what we’re looking at here.”
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Drew Smith led Columbus North with a 7-over-par 79. Henry Kiel and Jacob Niebalski each shot 83, while Jackson Kerber carded an 87 and Luke VanDeventer had a 92.
“Drew and Henry (Kiel) have to play better,” Bieker said.
“They have to do better than that and I think they know that, hopefully that’s not putting too much pressure on them.”
The Bull Dogs also had a B team that placed 11th with a 384. Cameron Ziegler and Connor Williams led the B team with 93s. Other members of that team were Carter Ward (99), Reese Moore (101) and Michael Gambiani (104).
Kody Reynolds was the top golfer for the Olympians with an 81, and Mark Mayhew finished right behind him with an 83. Avery Frost carded a 90, Leyton Erfmeler added a 102 and Cole Schaefer shot 109.
East coach Tom LaBarbera is looking to use Saturday as a learning experience for his golfers.
“One of the nice things about this course is, it’s very challenging, so it exposes our weakness,” LaBarbera said. “Obviously, we had a lot of weaknesses today by our score. If the boys can recognize some of their deficiencies, and we try to improve those, hopefully today will be a success in that regard.”
Jennings started on the back nine and struggled during that first stretch. Panthers coach BJ Bingham said he didn’t like the way they started, but was pleased with the way his team ended the front nine.
Bryce Kirchner led Jennings with an 85, and Hunter Conrad added an 89. Austin Roscoe finished with a 93, Justin Gasper shot 94 and Joe Kelley had a 104.
“We ended up beating a lot of pretty decent teams, getting up there with a lot of pretty decent teams,” Bingham said. “I think the greens were faster than any of us expected … We’ve played worse, and we’ve played better this year. We definitely have to play better than that by sectional time.”
