Woodbridge tops Tars, creating third-place tie

Chris Yemma

It was an emotional, wet, soggy and routine day all in one for the

Newport Harbor High girls golf team in Thursday’s match against

Woodridge at Rancho San Joaquin Golf Course.

It was the last scheduled Sea View League match of the season for

the Sailors, the last regular-season contest for the seniors. The

Sailors (8-7, 5-5 in league) lost, 229-244, but this one wasn’t

necessarily about the score.

“This is the end of something that was really good,” said Sailor

senior Kayleigh Horn, with tears running down her face. “It is also

the beginning of something new. I’m going to miss them so much.

“It was a wonderful season, I couldn’t have asked for more.”

There will be more, however, since the loss dropped the Sailors

into a third-place tie with Woodbridge (10-6, 5-5).

The tie will be decided by team scores taken from Monday’s league

individual tournament at San Juan Hills Golf Course in San Juan

Capistrano.

If Newport wins the team tiebreaker, it will earn a berth into the

Southern divisional team tournament, scheduled Nov. 5 at El Prado

Golf Course in Chino.

Both teams were playing what Newport Coach Marianne Towersey

called, a “lift, clean and place” game, due to the course being so

soggy from the previous day’s rain. Most shots lodged into the

spongy, muddy grass, so the players were allowed to remove shots from

embedded lies, clean the ball and place it atop the playing surface.

Newport Harbor junior Natalie Draganza shot 42 to share medalist

honors with Woodbridge’s Kelly Cabana. It was the seventh time in 10

league matches that Draganza carded the lowest nine-hole round. Horn

was the medalist in the other three.

“[Draganza has] definitely lived up to expectations this year,”

Towersey said of the two-time defending league individual champion.

“Her average [nine-hole score] for league is around 39. Both Kayleigh

and Natalie have a very good shot at being the top two on Monday.”

Horn, third at the league individual tournament last fall, shot 47

Thursday, tied for third overall.

Ashley Jacobs (48), Kendall Horn (53), Iko Kagasoff (54) and Katie

McKay (57) also scored for Newport Harbor.

The sixth hole on the par-36 course gave the Sailors the most

trouble. It was the shortest par 4 at 297 yards, but the lake on the

left side, just before the green, threw the visiting Sailors off.

Two Newport golfers drove into the water and two more, perhaps

compensating, saw their drives sail right of the cart path bordering

the fairway.

It was not a day the team had hoped for.

“I didn’t do very well,” said Draganza, who parred four holes.

“I’m really disappointed, I wanted to do well. The team needed to

win. We could have done better.”

But for the seniors, this was a day that anything would have been

acceptable, just as long as they were all playing together.

“This is the last match with girls I have played with for three

years,” McKay, unaware at the time of Monday’s tiebreaker, said after

knocking in her last putt. “We came together as a team and this was a

good season.”