WHS Mule Golf

April 18 was a beautiful calm day on a relatively dry Riverside golf course and the Mules used the opportunity to up their intra-conference record to 7-0 with a 179-213 score over Adna High School.

The course was in great shape, but the Mules found the fairways to be tighter than expected and struggled to shoot their usual scores. Nevertheless Tyler St. Onge medaled with a solid 39. The Mules swept the top three places with Victor Hummer in second with 42 and Valente Guitron in third with 47. The usually steady players Zach Johnston and Logan LaBerge both struggled to post 51, and Kaleo Silva posted a 59 in his first varsity appearance in 2019.

On April 19, the Mule junior varisty finished third, scoring 433 in a four man, 18 hole event in the Seaside JV Invitational at Astoria CC.

In team scoring, Seaside finished first at 377, Scappose second with 389, Astoria fourth with 477 and Tillamook fifth with 514 out of nine teams entered.

In the individual events Jacob Fichen finished first for Astoria; Jaden Holmason’s 86 for Scappose was second, and Chris Bodner’s 90 from Seaside finished third. Valente Guitron shot 96 for the Mules.

On Monday, the Mules experienced one of those days were everything seemed to go wrong. Granted they were playing in a golf tournament in Oregon where the average attendance of the schools is 400 plus. Wahkiakum and Ilwaco represented small schools from Washington.

Ilwaco’s Blake Kukula, two time Washington Class 2B state champion won the tournament with a birdie on the first sudden death playoff hole after shooting 74 and propelling Ilwaco to a seventh place finish out of 9 teams with a 4 man total of 379.

The Mules shot 383 and finished eighth. Both Southwest 2B schools are undefeated in league play and are looking forward to a showdown on a neutral golf course, Mint Valley in Longview on May 2.

The real story was Mules' number one player Tyler St. Onge, who has been carrying the Mules for two seasons, shot 97, 15 strokes off his average. The Mules usually get some help from the other players but not this day. Only senior Zach Johnston had a decent round with 85. Logan LaBerge drove the ball well but struggled with his approach shots and scored a 99.

Oregon plays five players to a team while Washington plays six, so that left Elijah Doiron and Joseph Savelio as the last hope to overtake arch rival Ilwaco. They needed a 98 to tie but came in with 103 for Elijah and 102 for Joseph. The team is a little sullen for now but they know what they need to work on between now and the district championship on May 13. The next match is today (Thursday) at Tumwater Valley GC versus Life Christian Academy.