AHS girls golf finishes second at home tourney with regionals, state coming up
Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times
This wasn’t for the state championship. That’ll come in a couple of weeks.
As Aspen High School girls golf coach Shannon Day put it, Tuesday’s tournament at Aspen Golf Club was about practice. After all, with the course only having opened a handful of days prior, the Skiers have about as much time playing it this spring as their opponents.
That’s not much in the way of a home-course advantage, but that’ll come, too.
“I’m happy with it,” Day said of her team’s performance on Tuesday. “There was no pressure for what to do today and their best score was 259 a few weeks ago at Bookcliff. This is the best score we’ve shot, and they left so much out there and I knew they would and they are going to learn. That’s what these tournaments are about.”
Aspen shot a team score of 258 on Tuesday — a season best, per Day — to finish second in its home tournament to Steamboat Springs (256). Vail Mountain was third with 286. Glenwood Springs finished toward the bottom of the pack with 319.
Individually, Steamboat’s Kaitlyn Grommeck won behind her 79, while Aspen’s Brooke O’Sullivan and Lenna Persson each shot 80 to finish second and third, respectively. AHS sophomore Audrey Woodrow was just a few spots outside the top 10 after shooting 98.
“Now we can dial in and really practice what we need to do out here,” Day said of the coming week or so. “Our course is tough with our greens. We have really good and fast greens and it’s early season. They just get better and better, and faster and faster, because our maintenance team does such a good job. We’ve got to putt on these greens better and we can have the advantage by practicing that before states.”
Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times
John Castrese/Aspen High School
Tuesday’s tournament wrapped up Aspen’s regular season. Next week, the Skiers will travel to Craig for the regional tournament, where they’ll hope to qualify for the Class 3A state championship, which Aspen Golf Club is hosting on May 30 and 31. It’ll be a big two days for the town and for the AHS golf program when it hosts the rest of the state for the finale.
“We have a young team. An experienced and a talented team, but they are still young,” said Day — formerly Worth — who is in her third season as the team’s head coach after previously serving as an assistant. “They have high expectations for themselves, which I love. And all of this is practice and all of it is going to help them.”
Eyes will be on the Skiers’ dynamic duo of O’Sullivan, a junior, and Persson, a sophomore. This is the first season AHS has both healthy and playing together after O’Sullivan hurt her knee playing basketball a year ago and sat out the 2022 spring golf season.
Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times
As a freshman last spring, Persson won the regional tournament to qualify for state alongside Woodrow, with Persson finishing 12th and Woodrow 54th at The Broadlands.
O’Sullivan was 10th at state two years ago at Elmwood Golf Course after having finished fourth at regionals that year.
“Can we compete? Yes,” Day said of her team’s chances at state this spring. “That’s what you need is that pressure situation in the past to be able to compete here. Is one year enough to be 100% ready? I hope so. It’s so mental, this game.”
Before the Skiers get the chance to compete in the state tournament on their home course, however, they’ll first need to qualify via Monday’s regional tournament at Yampa Valley Golf Course.
Persson, O’Sullivan lead AHS girls golf into thick of Day 1 championship hunt
This is a program that was happy just to be able to field a four-person team only a few years ago. Now, it’s knocking on the door of a first state championship, and it could come Wednesday on its home course.
