centaurs pg 7 6-8-23
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captions, left to right:
Maya Orbegozo
Sophie Gronski
Ella Musumeci
Liliana Bottone. Photos by Marc Allard
Every shot counts.
“That’s the stinging nature of golf,” said girls’ golf coach Earl Semmelrock. “We lose the individual medalist by one shot and we lost the team trophy by two shots. Some days the ball bounces your way and some days it doesn’t.”
Semmelrock said he emphasized the point of not giving up on any shot on the short bus ride over from Woodstock Academy to the Connecticut National Golf Club in Putnam for the ECC tournament championship last week.
The Centaurs had already found out just how much every shot means.
“I told them that we had missed qualifying for States by a cumulative 13 shots over the season so every shot counts,” Semmelrock said.
The Centaurs had just played on the Connecticut National course in their last regular season meet the day before and posted a 225 total. It was enough to defeat Killingly which had only three players and didn’t meet the minimum requirement for a team score to be posted.
The win over Killingly meant the Centaurs finished the regular season with a 12-3 overall record and a 10-2 mark in the ECC, good enough for a second-place finish.
That meant most expected a showdown between Norwich Free Academy (12-0 in the league) and the Centaurs in the league championship tournament.
That party, however, was crashed by East Lyme who came out of nowhere to finish with a 214 total, two strokes better than the Centaurs who improved by nine strokes over the day before with a 216 total and three better than NFA at 217. The sting may even have been a bit worse when it came to the individual medalist.
Senior Maya Orbegozo was in the first of the nine groups that played in the tournament.
She came into the clubhouse with an eight-over par 43 and was the leader for a lengthy amount of time.
But Killingly freshman Mackenzie Pothier went into the ninth hole tied with Orbegozo.
The senior peered down from a hill above the ninth green at Connecticut National as Pothier’s tee shot landed on the back of the ninth green and trickled into the rough.
Had the two tied, a playoff would have ensued and Orbegozo, who had been sitting for awhile, was advised to go and get ready for such an event.
Orbegozo chose to stay and watch. Pothier was just off the green but was a good 50-feet from the pin.
Her chip, however, was on line and did a 180-degree victory lap around the cup before it fell in.
As the ball fell, so did Pothier who knew what it meant due to the new scoring system adopted by the CIAC this season that allows players to know their status in a match at all times. The birdie gave the youngster the win.
The Centaur senior had a good first seven holes in the 9-hole match.
She was just three-over par going into the eighth hole. She got a couple pars and a birdie on the par-5 sixth hole.
“I hit a three-wood down the middle just to play it safe into my seven-wood to the back of the green and my second putt went right in the hole,” Orbegozo said.
But things got a little more difficult after a par on the seventh hole as Orbegozo triple-bogeyed the eighth and double-bogeyed the ninth.
Ella Musumeci added a 56 and Liliana Bottone finished with a 57 for the Centaurs to help them earn the second-place finish as a team in their final competition.
Orbegozo, Musumeci and Bottone were all named ECC All-Stars with Shannon Cunniff named as the team’s ECC Scholar-Athlete and Sophie Gronski getting the team’s ECC Sportsmanship Award.
The Centaurs will lose Orbegozo, Musumeci and Cunniff to graduation.
There was a glimmer of hope that the team had made the CIAC Div. II state tournament which took place on Monday.
On Thursday, Semmelrock was informed the Centaurs were a part of the field.
Unfortunately, a scoring error was discovered and the invite to the tournament was rescinded on Friday bringing an end to the Woodstock Academy season.
Marc Allard
Director of Sports Information
The Woodstock Academy
.