Longhorn Golfers Off To District

The Kimball High Girl's Golf Team closeout out the regular season this past week with tournaments at Ogallala and Bridgeport and moved into District Tournament play this past Monday back at Ogallala. The Kimball girls finished 4th at Ogallala in a field of large schools and took runner-up team honors at the Bridgeport tournament.

OGALLALA TOURNAMENT

The Lady Horns had to battle the big schools at Ogallala with North Platte taking top team honors with their 317 score leaving The talented Scottsbluff team in 2nd with 319. Chadron finished 3rd with 401, two strokes better than 4th place Kimball with 403. Other team scores were Cozad 412, Mitchell 422, McCook 445, Ogallala 464, Perkins County 527, and Hershey 537.

A good day for Kimball junior Payton Wise shooting a round of 80 to tie for 4th place in individual honors. Scottsbluff golfers took the top two spots with rounds of 74 and 76 with a North Platte golfer in 3rd with a 78 and Scottsbluff also in a tie for 4th with Wise.

Kimball's Katie Heeg had a good day with her round of 99, Brooklin Golding shot 111, Maddie Cook 113, and Keara O'Brien 119.

BRIDGEPORT TOURNAMENT

Mitchell welcome to back their number one golfer at Bridgeport who had been sitting out the past few weeks and she boosted her Lady Tiger team to a top team finish with a score of 394. Kimball finished number two in the runner-up spot with 405, but their number one golfer, Payton Wise, ran away with the medalist honors shooting around of 41-41=82 to win by 13 strokes over Jacque Bowles of Mitchell who shot 95.

Kimball had three girls finish in the top 10 medal group with Katie Heeg 4th shooting 50-49=99 and Maddie Cook 8th with 53-54=107. Brooklin Golding had a round of 58-59=117 and Keara O'Brien shot 69-64=133.

Finishing behind Mitchell with 394 and Kimball with 405 were Bridgeport 468, Perkins County 490, Garden County 503, Creek Valley 540, and Bridgeport JV 576. Sidney JV, Bayard, and Gering JV had no team score.

The individual top ten listing, as mentioned, had Payton Wise with 82 and Bowles of Mitchell 2nd with 95. The balance of the top 10 were McKinley Knotts- Mitchell 98, Katie Heeg-Kimball 99, Brooklyn Briggs-Mitchell 99, Lexi Schledewitz- Mitchell 102, Kayla Reichenberg- Perkins County 104, Maddie Cook- Kimball 107, Tarah Ross- Garden County 111, Keona Hill- Garden County 112, Mileena Cruz- Bridgeport 112.

DISTRICT AT OGALLALA.

The Kimball girls will journey to Ogallala this Sunday where they will play a practice round on the Crandell Creek Golf Course, site of the District and State qualifying course, with District play to be held on Monday- October 5th. The Kimball team will spend the night in Ogallala thanks to financial donations by parents to provide for motel rooms.

The goal at District for Coach Katie Culek and her team is to qualify the team in the top three which would get them a spot in the upcoming state tournament. It has been a number of years since a Kimball High girl's team has qualified according to coach Culek. "Not in my five years with the program for sure" she said.   "We need to get Max performance from all of our girls on the same day, and this has not happened yet this season. If it does, we are going to be hard to beat" Coach Culek said.

Payton Wise is a two time state qualifier and Katie Heeg is a 1 year state qualifier and both are looking for return trips but want to make this year a state qualifying year for Kimball as a team. Wise was the District champion last year as a sophomore and Heeg, also a sophomore in her first year with the sport, finished 8th with both qualifying as members of the top ten individuals.