Varsity Boys third at YME Invitational

Nolan Boerboom fired a 41 to lead the Vikings varsity boys’ golf team to a third place finish this past Friday at the YME conference tournament.  Nolan's score was good for 4th place individual honors.  Aaron Loe for Lakeview and Sam Ohliger from YME were tournament medialist firing 38s.
Mitchell Rost was second for the Vikings team with a 44.  Cole Myhre was third with a 46 and rounding off the team score was Chase Differding with a 52.  Other Viking scores included Joey Rybinski and Braxton Downing with 55’s.
In the girls division, Lauren Bowyer was tournament medalist firing 49 for first place honors.  Jeren Rost followed up with a 58.  Emily Rybinski, in her first year of varsity golf, fired a 60 for her lowest score of the season and Natalie Bot a 61 to round off the team scoring 0f 228 and second place team honors.  Coach Evers noted, “Our score of 228 was six strokes lower than our earlier meet this week at Tyler.”
Weather conditions have had a significant impact on area golf courses.  To date, Montevideo, Dawson and Tracy have yet to open their golf courses and Canby’s club house remains closed.  Minneota’s golf course has had similar water problem with water in front of 2 and 4 greens resulting in a modification of how to play both holes. 
Recent rule changes have had only a minor impact on how area golfers approach the game.  Long time coach David Guertin from YME and Nicole Evers, Minneota girls' varsity coach commented on the new rule changes.  Both were in agreement the only visible change are players choosing to leave the pin in the cup while putting.  However, soon to be an issue is the new three minute time limit to find a lost golf ball.  Currently, no one has actually used the clock to time such a search.  If not found, coaches will have to decide if they will allow the new rule to drop a ball in the fairway in the approximate area of the lost ball and add two strokes rather than walk back and retee.  Also, all sand traps thus far, have been taken out of play.  However, as the weather improves and sand traps come into play a number of new changes will be clearly visible.
Varsity golfers have a busy week with meets on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.