On Oct. 22, State High’s Boys Golf Team entered the PIAA State Championship at the Penn State Blue Course. The Little Lions held the lead for most of the day, but ultimately finished in a tie for second.
The team got off to a hot start with six birdies in the first 15 total holes. Junior Luke McGraw led the way with 9 straight pars. McGraw, like every player in the AAA boys division, took advantage of starting on the easier back nine. The hot start put the team four strokes behind Unionville, who held first place early in the day.
“The team was feeling good. We won by a huge margin at sectionals, districts, regionals, Mid-Penns, against that team, Hershey, that we played in the state championship. So we really felt pretty good going into it, and we all really liked our chances,” McGraw said.
The team started too slow, however, as they fell down to fifth place. Junior Charlie Ladrido helped the team scratch back up with a clutch birdie on hole 18.
“It was a battle out there, we’re going back and forth and it was pretty nerve-wracking,” Ladrido said.
The team kept gaining and eventually worked up a 5-stroke solo lead. Senior Brady Wager led the hot streak with a birdie on holes 18 and 1, followed by a huge par save on hole three.
The two title favorites all year, Unionville and State College, battled throughout the day, and Unionville took a one-shot lead with one player from each team left on the course.
Unionville’s last player had parred the last hole; however was assessed a two-stroke general penalty for a violation in the bunker, which gave State College a one-stroke lead.
“What I like to do is not check the leaderboard at all to not know where we stand. Just have a very level mindset going into playing and not trying to get too ahead of ourselves. But I think down the stretch, we got anxious and wanted to see where we stood inside. We were in front and got a little nervous,” McGraw said.
State High junior Luke Ladrido came up the par five ninth with a one-stroke lead, but the confusion surrounding the Unionville penalty made it unclear what he needed to do to win the tournament. Ultimately, Ladrido made his first double bogey of the tournament, rendering the penalty irrelevant, and State High came up one stroke short of a state championship.
“We’re a pretty young team, you got all juniors [who are] gonna be back next year…it’s all my best friends so you’ve been with each other for a long time and we all would do anything for each other so we gotta continue to have that friendship and if one person lets us down then you just gotta look past it and get over it, be better next time and just continue to to stick with each other in the ups and downs,” Charlie Ladrido said.
After taking a month-long winning streak into states, a second-place tie with Radnor wasn’t an ideal outcome, but with five of the team’s top six players returning next year, the future looks bright.
