By Catherine Garrett | [email protected]

The Corner Canyon High boys golf team found themselves 13 shots back from the lead after the first day of the 5A state tournament at Glen Eagle Oct. 3. First-year coach Derek Fox gathered his team together and said, “Second place is great,” but the response from his seven golfers was that they wanted to be more aggressive and put pressure on Skyline, who sat in first. The result on a day of bad weather and rain was a fourth-place finish with a 593 score — just five strokes out of second place.

“We were about four or five swings away from a legitimate shot at the title,” Fox said. “In all reality, we probably cost ourselves second place by trying to go for first. But, you never want to not try for the top if it’s within your reach at all.”

Senior Mitch Anderson, the Region 7 medalist, came into state with confidence that he could play against the top players in the state, but knew he had to play his best golf. He had rounds of 74 and 69 to place fourth.

“State was fun as I played well, but it was a bummer knowing that two holes cost me the individual title,” Anderson said, referring to holes 15 and 16 from the first day. 

Fox said Anderson started off pretty nervous in dealing with being at the top of the leaderboard, but he was proud of the way his captain battled the last day through worse playing conditions to shoot five strokes better than Day 1. 

“Mitch has really come into his own and had an awesome year,” Fox said. “He was two swings away from the individual title.”

Anderson said he had to get past emotions of knowing he was playing his final high school golf early on in his last round. “It took me about three holes to go from being a little sad to turning on the competitive mode,” he said. “I tried to love and embrace every moment knowing it would be my last.”

Others from the Region 7 championship team who competed at state were All-Region players Ty Felts (who placed 13th with scores of 71 and 76), Gabe Schino (tied for 21st), Patrick Holmes (tied for 31st), Jake Woolston (tied for 31st) and Carter Boyle (60th)

Jackson Bench also participated at state and shot the team’s lowest round the first day with a 70 and went on to tie for 18th place with a second-day 88. “We hadn’t played him in a lot of varsity events so this was a good experience for him,” Fox said. 

Anderson said a highlight of the season was winning the individual medalist title at region, which he did after coming back from three shots down following the first round. He led the Chargers to a Region 7 title with a dominating 90-shot win in which Corner Canyon won all but one of its matches and the one loss was by just one stroke.

“All of us are close friends and it was fun to win together,” Anderson said.

“We had a really good year and this team had a real chance at state,” Fox said. “We’ll focus next year on finishing stronger.”