GREENWOOD — The Heritage Academy golf team was up for the challenge.
Stalled by rain and soggy conditions Tuesday at Greenwood Country Club, the Patriots fought off the elements and the hunters en route to a score of 318 that was good enough to win the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools AAA championship.
Caleb Westmoreland shot a 72 to pace Heritage Academy. Cade Lott (79) and Evan McElrath and J.R. Wright (84s) rounded out the team”s scorers. Hunter Anderson (88) and Konrad Vernon (89) also played.
“I am very pleased with the effort of the team,” Heritage Academy coach Ed Lott said. “They knew going in what they had to do. With the year they had, everybody was going to bring their ”A” game and try to beat us. I was really pleased with the way the kids responded and came away with a state championship. It is something they won”t ever forget.”
Presbyterian Christian eighth-grader Davis Riley shot a 1-under-par 71 on the 6,250-yard layout and tied with Starkville Academy”s Korn Simsiriwong for first at the end of regulation. Riley, the defending champion, birdied the first hole of a playoff to beat Simsiriwong, who parred the 500-yard par-5.
Heritage Academy edged Jackson Academy (321) to take the AAA title. It defeated JA in a playoff to win the North AAA championship.
Coach Lott said the start of the championship was pushed back from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. He said the shotgun start made it difficult for him to tell if the Patriots were in the lead or which team was close. He said he did his best to stay in a central location where he could monitor progress on several holes.
Still, he said he knew from the way the Patriots were playing on the wet course that the outcome would go down to the wire.
“After all of the scores started t come in we were nervous and trying to figure out if this guy shot this or that guy shot that if they could beat us,” Lott said. “We thought JA would have a good chance because we had just beaten them in a playoff to win the North half, but when they started to post the scores they had one scorer out and we knew we won then.”
Heritage Academy won seven of the nine tournaments it played in this season.
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