ONEKAMA — Construction starts at the top
this year for the Onekama golf team’s rebuilding project.
The Portagers, who qualified as a team for a Division 4 regional
last season, will be without their top two golfers in graduates Levi
Capper and Drew Griswold. But, according to Mary Jo Zadow, the
losses don’t hinder the loft of Onekama’s expectations.
“We’re looking to be, hopefully, as competitive as we were last
year,” she said. “I think our strength, which may be a little bit
hopeful on the part of the coach, is that we can fill in the shoes
that were vacated by those who graduated last. "Those who are
returning, will hopefully be able to fine tune their games to be
able to post lower scores this season."
The Portagers hope filling the void will
come naturally to seniors Brenner Johnson and Jake Matthews,
Onekama's No. 3 and 4 golfers from a year ago.
“We’re of course going to miss Levi
and Drew, but I’m hoping that Jake and Brenner can fill those shoes,
and they seem to be occupying those shoes well.”
Outside the two seniors, Onekama’s roster consists of five juniors,
two sophomores and three freshmen. “We’re kind of a mixture of 12
individuals with great diversity of ability,” Zadow said. “We should
be able to post some strong team scores.”
Outside of the pair of seniors, Zadow
expects to see lower scores from returners junior Skyler Kimpel and
sophomores Sean Lowe and Alex Welch. There’s also a promising duo of
newcomers who practiced with the team last year as eighth graders in
Derek Hobart and Quinn Matthews.
