Staff
A black-and-gold wave washed over Kenora yesterday and will be bearing down on Geraldton by next week.
The Muskie boys’ golf team made history by securing the program’s first-ever NorWOSSA championship yesterday at Beauty Bay Golf Course.
Fort High clinched the title by finishing first at the NorWOSSA final with a combined score of 346—three better than the St. Thomas Aquinas Saints (349) while the Dryden Eagles placed third (367).
The 10 points for topping yesterday’s tournament gave Fort High a season total of 27 to earn the gold, well ahead of the second-place Sioux Lookout Warriors (18) and third-place St. Thomas Aquinas (17).
Those three teams, as well as the top five individual players not one of those teams, now advance to the NWOSSAA championship next Friday (Sept. 30) in Geraldton), where Fort High will try to capture its first team gold at that event since 2010.
The winning team there, and the top two individual players not on the winning team, move on to the OFSAA boys’ championship Oct. 11-13 in Port Elgin.
Kendyn Faragher and Sheldon Kelly Jr. set the pace for the Muskies yesterday in Kenora—tying for fourth in the 31-player field with matching scores of 84.
The duo finished seven strokes back of Owen Stebnitsky (Saints), who blistered the Beauty Bay course by carding a 77, the only sub-80 round shot this season in NorWOSSA competition.
Faragher ended the season third overall in individual points with 261, behind only Jacob Lugli of Dryden (287) and Nodin Carlson of St. Thomas Aquinas (264).
Another Fort High tie occurred for seventh place, with defending NWOSSAA silver-medalist Tyson Morrisseau and teammate Kaleb Bruyere each carding an 89 yesterday.
Cole Kowalski will round out the official Muskie team travelling to Geraldton after tying for 14th yesterday with a 96 to land seventh in points (213).
Bruyere was 10th for the season (204) while Morrisseau was 13th (175)—despite missing the opening tournament in Dryden.
Kelly came in 15th overall (157).
Mikel Ward gave Fort High another reason to celebrate yesterday—shooting a 105 to finish 21st but 20th in points (123).
That gave him the fifth and final NWOSSAA berth available to those not on a qualifying team (a category Ward qualified for since he was not one of the top five Muskie point-getters this season).
Gord Scott was the other Muskie competitor yesterday and continued his improvement since the start of the year.
Scott lowered his score another three strokes from his previous meet in Red Lake last week to finish 30th with a round of 126.
He wound up 33rd out of the 45 golfers in points with 30.
