Boys golf team opens season with six tournament victories
| Place | Participant | Total |
|---|
It’s difficult to imagine a team starting a season any better than Avon’s boys golf team has.
Less than three weeks into competition, the Eagles have won six tournaments and have a leg up on the field in the Southwestern Conference as they try to win the conference crown after missing by just a stroke last year.
Avon opened the season by winning the Amherst Invitational at Oberlin Golf Club with a team score of 309, followed by victories in the Keystone Invitational at Grey Hawk (317), the Elyria Catholic Invitational at Grey Hawk (307), the SWC Preview at Pine Hills (303), the Lorain County Athletic Administrators Association Tournament at Bob-O-Links (292), and the Strongsville Mustang Invitational at Bunker Hill (301).
“Winning six tournaments in a row is something special,” said coach Jeff Stevens, in his 29th and final season as head coach. “It’s never happened before. We knew that we were capable of doing that, but it is surprising that we were lucky enough to win a couple of those that were really close.”
Six players are on the varsity roster—seniors Jack Hecei, Cameron Ocepek, Ethan Olszowy and Zack Snyder, junior Sam Griffiths and freshman James Beeler. There is no standout individual, as five different players have been the team’s medalist, something Stevens looks at as an advantage for his troops.
“The strength of this team is our depth and our seniors,” he said. “What speaks to our depth is when we can count on someone to put up a score when one of our top players struggles. We number them one through six, and there have been times when our four, five and six have beaten our one, two and three. They’re all at a pretty even level, and we can count on any of them to put up a good score.”
With classes starting this week, the season will take on a new look, as there will be less competitions.
“We’ve made it to the point of the season where it slows down,” Stevens said. “The first two weeks are a grind. We have a match or a tournament just about every day. So now it slows down, but to keep up their skills, they have to keep practicing to maintain the level they’ve been playing at.
“I don’t take a lot of credit for the success, because they’re the ones who got this far by practicing hard over the summer by themselves. So, it’s really what they do as individuals out there. We get together to practice as a team, but it’s really what they figure out that they need to work on and then work on it on their own.”
The SWC championship is determined by the following formula: SWC Preview 20%, dual matches 20%, Midview Invitational 30% and the SWC championships 30%. The Eagles won the SWC preview, and currently sit at 1-1 in dual matches, having dropped a 149-153 decision to Olmsted Falls before handing Berea-Midpark its first loss of the season on Tuesday, winning by the score of 154-163 at Bob-O-Links.
Avon was led by Beeler with a score of 36, followed by Olszowy (38), Hecei (39), Ocepek (40), Snyder (41) and Griffiths (42).
uReport has been approved for inclusion in the ISTE+ASCD EdTech Index, a trusted resource used by educators to discover high-quality digital learning tools. As part of this process, uReport was reviewed and vetted for its alignment with effective teaching and learning practices, including support for authentic learning, digital citizenship, and responsible use of AI. uReport has also earned 1EdTech TrustEd Apps certification for Data Privacy.
