Benicia High’s girls golf team advanced to the Sac-Joaquin Section Masters Tournament for a third straight year after finishing in second place as a team at Monday’s Division II Tournament in Rocklin.
Benicia shot a 508 as a team at Rocklin Golf Club, finishing nine strokes ahead of Kennedy of Sacramento for the second and final Division II berth into the Masters Tournament. Whitney High of Roseville won the Division II team title with a 485.
“They’re so excited,” Benicia head coach Nan Prolo said after her golfers qualified for Masters. “We are jazzed. I knew there would be some very good teams there and I didn’t know how we’d do.”
Benicia’s first group finished 18 holes with scores about 10 strokes higher than their average, making the Lady Panthers worried about their chances for keeping the season alive.
“The other schools were putting up some pretty good early scores and I didn’t think we’d make it, but then all of sudden there were some bigger scores and ours got better,” Prolo said.
Benicia freshman Sofia Young birdied the 16th hole and finished with an 88, good enough for fourth place among individual golfers. The top five golfers earned medals.
Jennifer Eleccion added a 93, which was a solid score considering the difficulty of the Rocklin course. There were 67 sand traps spread over 18 holes, with lots of creeks and ravines that cut across narrow fairways.
“The course played difficult for everybody, especially on the front nine,” Prolo said. “There was very little room for error.”
Rachel Mahrt shot a 57 on the front nine but caught fire on the back nine, shooting a 44 to finish with a 101. Younger sister Catherine Mahrt shot a 110, the best 18-hole round of her career. Nicole Ramirez rounded out Benicia’s scorecard with a 116 and senior Jazmine Norman had a 124.
A Whitney golfer shot an 80 for the best individual round of the day. None of the other Solano County Athletic Conference individual representatives advanced to Masters, which takes place next Monday at The Reserve at Spanos Park in Stockton.
After the Division Tournament, the Lady Panthers went out to dinner with golfers from American Canyon.
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