Center Grove girls golf coach Cale Hoover came into the Johnson County tournament with the same approach he has every time his team competes against Franklin — if the Trojans’ top three players can stay close with the top three Grizzly Cubs, their superior depth should be able to win out.
That’s exactly how Wednesday’s showdown at The Legends played out.
Meg Fosnot was the tournament medalist with a 72 and Lanie DeHaven followed close behind with a 74, helping the fifth-ranked Trojans post a team score of 313 to beat the No. 9 Grizzly Cubs by 15 strokes.
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“Meg and Lanie, that’s their best rounds during the high school season,” Hoover said, “so that’s obviously really exciting. And then the three youngsters in the back, all went through a little bit of struggles, but they held in there. They can all play better, and they have played better … (but) we talked about, part of being a team is finishing with a number that’s not crazy. I looked back at our scores the past few years, and this performance blows the rest of those out of the water. So a good day for us.”
Franklin had three of the day’s top five scores — Liv Parramore shot a 73, Ellie Beavins a 75 and Ava Ray a 79 — but it could not keep pace with Center Grove all the way through the lineup. The Trojans rounded out their scoring with an 83 from Camille Short and 84s from Sage Parsetich and Abby Rich.
The ability of Fosnot and DeHaven to effectively cancel out Beavins and Parramore in the first two groups gave Center Grove a huge advantage. Fosnot got back to even par with an eagle on the par-5 third, her 13th hole of the day after the shotgun start, and held there the rest of the way for her best 18-hole round of the season.
Fosnot said that putting together a good score at the same course where the teams will battle for the sectional crown next month should give the Trojans a psychological edge moving forward.
“For me, definitely, I would say yes,” she said. “I think for the rest of the team, just getting to play well on this course, you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, this is a lot easier than what it seems.’ … Now that we’ve actually done well, we’re sort of like, ‘Oh, this is a lot easier than we thought. We can go and do this again.’”
Franklin’s players, meanwhile, are focused on shaking off Wednesday’s loss and looking ahead to the bigger tournaments in the postseason.
“I think it’s going to be a good motivator,” said Beavins, who played well despite being hospitalized earlier in the week with muscle spasms. “I think the big, important match is regionals. I think if we can tell our 4 and 5 players that regionals is all we need to worry about and just focus on that, I think we can beat them at regionals. I mean, county’s a big deal, but regionals is a bigger deal.”
“We’ve beaten them multiple times, so we’re not worried about it,” Parramore said. “We know Smock really well; Kara (Heuchan) knows Smock really well. Kara just had an off day. So yeah, we’re ready.”
The rest of the field finished far behind the county’s two titans. Greenwood finished third at 441, with Maura Guilfoy’s 88 leading the way. Edinburgh, led by Morgan Calhoun’s 93, was fourth at 452, and Greenwood Christian was fifth at 458 behind a 95 from Ashtyn Witte.
Whiteland was sixth at 476, with Tara Watson’s 103. Hannah Emenhiser shot a 101 to lead Indian Creek, which did not post a team score.
