The good news keeps rolling in for the Southwestern League’s best golf team.
A week after capturing their 10th straight SWL Title, Great Oak outperformed the entire rest of the league during the Individual Championships, with the top four golfers coming from the Wolfpack.
Ryan McCoy, who finished the season with the league’s second-best average at 74.5, shot the lowest score over the two day tournament, earning himself SWL MVP honors and the Individual League Championship.
His score of 143 was two less than that of the 2014 SWL MVP Kendel Hodges, thanks to his stellar performance on the back nine of Day 1, where he shot a tournament-low 32, and the front nine of Day 2, shooting 35 on his way to victory.
Two years prior, McCoy and Hodges finished neck-and-neck in the same situation, with Hodges taking the victory in a playoff. This time around McCoy took advantage of the slim lead he gained himself on Day 1 and downed his teammate shooting just one shot over par.
Following McCoy’s first-place finish and Hodges second-place finish were Great Oak’s Tim Davis and Haoyuan “Jack” Li, who tied for third-place at 147. Raj Gill, also a Wolfpack golfer, tied for eigth place and qualified for CIF, marking their fifth golfer who advanced to CIF.
The only Great Oak golfer that failed to make CIF Individuals was senior Matthew Lester, who fell one shot short of tying for eighth.
Last year, Li (who had the SWL’s best average at 73.5) and Davis had a similar situation to that of McCoy and Hodges in 2014, when the two tied following two days of play and had to go into a playoff, with Li barely edging out Davis. It was almost fitting that the two tied in this year’s tournament.
McCoy becomes Great Oak’s fifth-consecutive League Champion, a streak that started in 2012 with Jose Pelayo (Class of 2012), and continued on with Michael Howe (Class of 2013), Kendel Hodges (Class of 2016), Haoyuan Li (Class of 2016) and now McCoy (Class of 2017).
Five other Southwestern League golfers qualified for CIF Play thanks to their performances in the Championships, as Edwin Kuang (Fifth place), Michael McMillan (Seventh place) and Jonathan Graf (Eigth place) of Murrieta Valley and Jordan Cook (Sixth place) of Chaparral all qualified.
Three other Murrieta Valley golfers advanced past Day 1 of play, but failed to qualify for the Top 8 as Harrison Kingsley, Cade Casaga and Edward Yi fell just short.
Cook was the only Chaparral golfer to advance past Day 1, while only one Murrieta Mesa golfer (Alex Crozier) would do the same before failing to make the Top 8 in Day 2.
Out of the 18 golfers who qualified for Day 2, Vista Murrieta had two golfers move on with both Kaden Page and Austen Lopez advancing but failing to make Top 8. The same goes for Temecula Valley who had Devin Ferguson and Austin Parr advance to Day 2.
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