Golfers tee off

Sonja Karp

NLJ Sports Editor

In their debut competition in their inaugural year, the Dogie Golf Team showed up and competed well at the Sundance Invitational meet Friday. Head coach Scott Beehler, along with assistant coaches Brad Troftgruben and Wyatt Voelker, were pleased to see how their fledgling group did in their initial outing.

The team rosters nine boys and two girls, and each weekend the top five golfers will travel to compete, as that is the limit for each team. As such, five boys and one girl made the trip to Sundance, with the boys bringing home third as a team with 419 points. However, because it requires five golfers to make up a team, the ladies weren’t able to register an overall score.

“Friday was a whole new experience for the kids,” Beehler said. “I think it was a successful weekend though. The kids were happy and it was fun to watch them compete.” 

On the par 72 course, senior Thatcher Troftgruben finished third out of 48 golfers with a score of 91 points. Contributing to his good finish, he birdied (shot one under par) two holes in the front 9. 

“I was pretty scared off the first tee, but I got a decent drive, which helped calm the nerves a little bit and I finished that first hole pretty well so that really helped,” Troftgruben said. “After that, I just started playing golf. I had a good group in my foursome, so it became like playing with friends, and they helped me get the hang of things so that was great, too.”

“I was pretty happy with the two holes I birdied for sure, but then I had some blowup holes, of course, so that kind of evened things out,” Troftgruben said, chuckling. “I was happy with my third-place finish, because I wasn’t expecting that.”

DeLaney Fullerton was the only girl representing Newcastle High School at the meet, and she finished 16th out of 20 with a score of 144. 

“I was nervous at first, but once I met the girls that I was grouped with, I decided to just enjoy the day,” Fullerton said. “My best hole of the day was a bogie (which is one shot over par), but my favorite part of the day was meeting the girls and just playing and enjoying golf.”

Newcastle competes in the 3A East Conference, which are the same teams as basketball and volleyball. As such, they will be competing against those schools at
conference and state com-
petitions. Beehler anticipates that after the score his team put up in their opening weekend, Newcastle will come in about fifth out of eight in the 3A East.

“Right now we’re playing with 2A schools to get a feel for what’s going on,” Beehler explained. “We have a lot of ground to make up against schools who have established golf programs. We have several kids who are golfers, so they just need to adjust to a different format when it comes to playing.”

This week the team will travel to Pine Haven on Friday to compete against Moorcroft with tee off time scheduled for 9 a.m.