With round one complete, as of Monday night the Manhattan High Varsity girls golf team currently fills the third place spot at State.

“I think that they hung in there,” head coach Paige McCarthy said. “There’s a group of several other teams really fighting for second right now and … I feel like we’re in a good position. I’d rather be the chaser than the chased.”

Yesterday the girls played in Hesston against 64 total golfers and eight other teams — Derby, Dodge City, Garden City, Lawrence Free State, Olathe Northwest, Shawnee Mission East, and Overland Park Blue Valley and Blue Valley West. As a team, Manhattan came in third with a 350, just 16 strokes from Blue Valley West in second and 25 strokes from Shawnee in first.

“We’ll see how we end up [today],” McCarthy said. “We’re really close to second, so I think we like where we are and I think our senior leadership will really come into play [today].”

Each of the girls shot under a 100, with senior Andi Siebert taking the lead with an 85 — the sixth best score of the day — and tying for 13th place with six other golfers. Trailing close behind in the eighties, seniors Emily Yerman and Rhys Phipps shot an 86 and 89. In the nineties, seniors A.J. Ryan and Jaiden Weixelman scored a 90 and 96.

“We’re really happy,” McCarthy said. “Our next goal is to have under 90, but each of them could think of strokes that they could have done without … They would have a bad hole then they’d come back with a good hole and I think that shows a lot of character.”

Today the team will compete again to finalize their team and individual placements. In previous years, only the top teams and golfers of round one qualified for round two. However, as an added benefit to social distancing guidelines, all participants may compete in round two. Final team positions will be determined by individual scores achieved tomorrow, while individual positions will be calculated as the sum of both rounds.