St. John’s narrowly wins TRAC golf title

Austin of St. Francis is top individual

9/29/2011

FINDLAY — It took two tie-breakers and some extensive calculations, but St. John’s Jesuit emerged as the overall winner of the first Three Rivers Athletic Conference boys golf championship.

After St. Francis de Sales captured Wednesday’s TRAC tournament at Stone Ridge Golf Club in Findlay — posting a 313 to top runner-up St. John’s (318) and third-place Findlay (321) — that order of finish created a three-way tie at 51 points in the conference’s championship format, which included results from four weekly TRAC events played earlier in the season.

The first tie-breaker was total team scores for all conference events this season, and that calculation left St. John’s and Findlay still tied at 1,257 with St. Francis eliminated.

The overall title was then determined by the scores of St. John’s and Findlay’s No. 5 players in Wednesday’s conference tourney. The Titans’ Brian Hoeflinger shot an 82, two strokes lower than Findlay’s fifth best scorer, Mason McCool, thus giving St. John’s the title.

“With the points separating the top four schools [including Fremont Ross] being so close going into today’s championship, and the points being double for this one event, I knew today was going to be close,” St. John’s coach David Gigax said. “I told the team this morning how close I thought it would be and that everyone had to stay focused and continue to play hard.

“I knew if they continued to play hard they would come through. It was a little too close for comfort, but they did it. For it to be the for the first TRAC championship in any sport makes it even sweeter.”

Hayden Austin of St. Francis took tournament medal honors with a 2-over-par 74, teammates Ben Torchia (78), Kevin Metzger (79) provided the next two scores, and Nick Mitchell and J.T. Schlembach each carded 82s to make that the final score in the Knights’ 313 total.

St. John’s scoring came from Dominic Restivo (78), Denny Brown (79), Jack Mancinotti (79) and Topher Garzony (82).

Eli Stacy of Findlay was second individually at 75, and Brandon Hoelzer of Fremont Ross placed third at 76.