Monticello golf team leads Region 23 at midpoint of season

by Rhett Sifford
Sports Editor
The Monticello High School girls and boys golf teams both lead the 1A Region 23 standings over Pinnacle Academy midway through the regular season.
The boys, led by Darrin Westcott, are ahead of the Panthers by 116 strokes on average (377-493). Westcott shot identical rounds of 13-over-par 85 at the Buckaroos’ most recent matches at the Green River State Park.
On March 31, he was followed by Traken Lee who shot a 96, Landon Ewart with a 107, and Donovan Atwood with a 111.
On April 13 the team again paid a visit to Green River and four Buckaroos broke the 100-stroke mark. Lee followed up Westcott’s 85 by besting his own previous score by six strokes to shoot 90.
The MHS baseball team loaned Jackson Keyes to the golf team and he shot a respectable 96. And Kooper Nielson hit a 99 for the Bucks.
Westcott is averaging 85 strokes on the season, Lee is averaging 93, Keyes 96, Ewart 104, Easton Young 106, Nielson 108, Shane Lewis 112, Tug Davis and Atwood 112.5, Curtis Bunker 115.5, and Carter Harrod 127.
The Monticello girls lead Pinnacle by 49 average strokes (423-472). Jade Nielson leads the team with an average of 97.73. Following her is Amy Lewis with a 103.68 average, Cambree Chamberlain at 107.15, and Alise Lewis at 110.12.
Buckaroo Head Coach Nathan Chamberlain recently gave an update on the team’s progress to this point of the season. “The girls are still struggling with our putting, but the time in the ‘dungeon’ hitting full swings has paid off,” he said.
“Our girls are just about 20 strokes off of where we ended last year and we have had two girls break 100 which never happened last year.”
“We’ve had four boys break a hundred for the first time this season and as a team we’ve been dropping around 20 strokes each match,” Chamberlain continued.
“We have ten of the top 12 golfers in the region but we still have room for improvement in our scoring. We are looking forward to being able to golf at the Hideout soon if the weather would help us out a bit.”
At this point the teams are scheduled to play some hometown golf next Friday, April 28. But before that, the girls headed to Cortez to play the Panther Invitational at the Conquistador Golf Course on Tuesday, April 18. The whole team travels to Price this Thursday, April 10 to play the Carbon Country Club.