COURTLAND
Playing at the Royal New Kent Golf Club, the Southampton Indians put up a score of 334, which was enough to advance the team to the VHSL Regional Finals.

The team was outscored by New Kent High School with a score of 327, but Southampton’s score was enough for second in the eight-team field, and the top two teams from each conference advance to the regionals.

The team was boosted by scores of 75, 80, 85 and 94, put together, respectively, by senior Brandon Munford, senior Hunter Peck, sophomore Brendan Simms and sophomore William Newsome.

Regionals will be played at another New Kent County golf course, Brickshire, and New Kent High School will again be amongst the competition.

To win, Munford said, he figured they’d have to shoot around 325, while he feels like up to 330 is enough to simply advance.

“New Kent, that’s probably our biggest competition, since they play the golf courses in the New Kent area the most” he said. “First and second move on, but we are coming after them.”

But Southampton played this course last year in their conference finals, and Munford feels like that might help.

“I think that gives our whole team an advantage over the majority of the field,” he said.

“We are looking at playing a practice round on Sunday, so we can get used to the course again and see where the greens are rolling,” Simms added.

Another advantage is being able to bring the whole team. Last year, Munford advanced to regionals individually and made a run in the state tournament.

“I love being able to take the whole team,” he said. “Since we have the whole team going, I think we will be able to get a little more fired up and maybe take it all the way to states.”

Simms said they are pumped up for the match that begins Monday morning.

“We have to play our game, play the course, and don’t play to our opponents,” Simms said about getting a win. “We just have to play like we know how to play.”

As far as the conference tournament, Simms said he shaved a good 7 strokes off his score from last year, and he’s knocked off 9 strokes during district play with his season average of 38. They play 9 holes during district play, and 18 holes during the playoffs.

“It’s just been a lot of hard work and practice over the summer,” he said on his improvement. “I played every day in the offseason.”

Munford finished second during the conference tournament with his score of 75. Last year, his season average was 39, and this year, he finished with a scoring average of 37 during district play. He was mostly happy with his play during the conference match.

“I hit the ball well, I just didn’t really get any putts to fall,” Munford said. “Nothing has been falling in the hole the past couple of weeks.”

Peck also improved by a stroke from last season, moving from 41 to 40 during district play.

If the Division 3A Indians advance to states, as a team or individually, it will be from Oct. 13-14 at Ivy Hill Golf Club in Forest. The top two teams in the regionals will advance, and individually, the top six players with scores under 100 on teams that do not advance will continue on.