The Manhattan Indians girls golf team finished second in the Firebird Invitational on Sept. 22 in Lawrence. Manhattan, with a low score of 316, tied with Shawnee Mission East. The tie breaker came down to the fifth golfer, which put Shawnee over the Indians.
“It’s obviously very rare that four people combined to shoot the same, so it was kind of interesting,” senior Kat Ball said. “So obviously it’s friendly competition, but we definitely have a bigger hunger to win all these tournaments”
Individually, junior Maddie Myers took the crown, finishing first with a score of 73. Senior Lily Bahr (76) took third, Ball (78) grabbed fifth, senior Wrenn Burton (89) took 13th and freshman Gabby Fehr and senior Jessica Kim tied for 28th with a score of 100.
“One thing that I love about this team is no matter what we do, everyone wants to get better and do better for each other,” Ball said. “So I think today was really good for us, motivationally, to get to Shawnee Mission East, because they’re our biggest competition.”
The Indians had 13 days to prepare for the Firebird Invitation after their prior tournament in Salina, giving them the chance to work out parts of their game that they want to improve.
“We’ve worked on a lot of short game, like chipping, putting exercises, that’s the bulk of it,” Myers said.
In the Salina Central Invitational, the Indians as a team put up a program-record low score of 294, putting them a top the leader board at Salina Municipal Golf Course on Sept. 8.
“This year, it’s kind of just a little expected, I guess, because we know what we can do and what we’re capable of,” Myers said.
Myers owned first place with a score of 68 and all five golfers for the Indians occupied spots in the top ten.
“I gave myself a lot of chances and looks at birdies pretty early,” Myers said. “I think for the team we’ve been playing at that course together for three years now, and the course itself is pretty scorable, and so I think we’ve all just kind of finally figured it out.”
Bahr (73) took fifth, just a stroke better than Ball (74) who snatched seventh. Burton (79) and Kim (82) were not far behind as they took the eighth and 10th spots respectively.
The Indians compete in three meets next week. Their next tournament is the Centennial League meet in Junction City on Sept. 29.
“It’ll definitely be a big mindset to be able to balance from tournament to tournament to tournament, quite literally, three full tournaments,” Ball said.
