Another high school golf season is nearly in the books, but first, the Demons will compete against the best in 4A for a state title on a familiar course.
Usually, Durango girls golf has to travel up to Denver or Colorado Springs to compete in the state championship. This season, the Demons will only have to travel two and a half hours north to Montrose to The Bridges Golf & Country Club, a course Durango has played multiple times this year.
The Demons must hope that experience will give them an advantage over their Front Range rivals in pursuit of the state title. Durango has finished second in two of the last three state championships and won nearly every tournament it competed in this season.
“We’re in pretty good shape, as far as the course we’re going to be playing and the four girls that we’re going to be taking up there,” Durango head coach Kirk Rawles said.
Once again, the Demons have qualified their entire top four for the state tournament. It’s a different qualifying format this year than last year.
In the past, teams would go to regionals and would qualify for state depending on how they did there. This school year, regionals were scrapped. Players and teams qualified based on how they did in the regular-season tournaments. The top 84 in Iwannamaker’s player rankings advanced to state this year. Each team gets to bring four players inside the top 84. Any other player inside the top 84 doesn’t get to go.
Junior Dylan Livingston, senior Jayden Craig, senior Riley Harms and sophomore Kierstin Maycock all finished the regular season inside the top 84 to qualify. Sophomore Kailen Noonan also qualified inside the 84, but since she was Durango’s fifth-ranked player in the state, she doesn’t get to compete.
Players will play 18 holes on Monday and 18 holes on Tuesday. Pairings for Tuesday’s round will be based on how players do on Monday.
The Demons haven’t competed in a tournament since the Panther Invitational in Cortez on April 28. Since then, Durango made a trip up to Montrose for a practice round at The Bridges. The team has practiced at Hillcrest Golf Club from the longer tee boxes to prepare for the course’s length and to match yardages at The Bridges. Rawles had a tournament he could’ve taken his team to in Grand Junction at Tiara Rado Golf Course, but he declined.
“Last year we kind of pushed the envelope,” Rawles said. “We did go and play at Tiara Rado, and then the following week we had to go to regionals at Loveland, then the following week we had to go to Broomfield for state. There was kind of a burnout factor last year. This year we’re going to go in, and we’re going to stay fresh.”
Durango has some experience playing The Bridges in competition this season, with the Demons winning the Battle at The Bridges on March 30. Livingston finished second that day, although the conditions were much different from what they’ll see on Monday and Tuesday since it was earlier in the season with slower greens.
Livingston is also the Demons’ top-ranked player going into the 4A state tournament, in 13th. At over 6-feet-tall, Livingston has power most girls can only dream of, with 300+ yard drives, 200+ yard 6-irons and 150+ yard pitching wedges. However, her power puts her in a precarious position on most holes at The Bridges.
Rawles thinks she’ll only hit driver two or three times over the 18 holes. Players need to hit it between 200 and 235 yards off the tee because there are arroyos and some of the fairways end after 235 yards. Rawles said Livingston will have to plan out her yardages well because there will be a lot of shots into the green where players have to navigate trees, bunkers and water to get to the greens.
“Where Dylan has an advantage, even in that, is that she hits the ball really high, and so she can hit to those yardages … She’s going to be able to hit it high and get it to land soft,” Rawles said.
Craig is right behind Livingston in 14th in the rankings. She finished 16th last year at state and is one of the best female putters that Rawles has coached. Craig has shown she can win tournaments this year, tying with Livingston for first at the GJ Tiger Open on April 20.
“She’s hitting the ball great, and she’s a good putter,” Rawles said about Craig. “She has a really good game that’s really going to suit this course.”
Behind Craig and Livingston is Harms at 26th. Rawles is proud of how hard she’s worked to improve her game a lot in a short period of time. She hits the ball very high, and Rawles doesn’t think she’s intimidated by The Bridges. She’s averaged an 85 this year, and Rawles thinks that’s a reasonable goal to shoot both days.
Maycock is the team’s fourth golfer at 42nd in the rankings. Another hard worker, Rawles said she’s been working hard to make sure she has enough driving yards to hit it in the right spot.
As a team, the Demons are ranked fifth in 4A, but there’s barely anything between them in fifth, Niwot in third and Pueblo West in fourth. Durango is playing with Ponderosa on Monday, which is ranked second and has to girls in the top five, so it’ll be a good test for Durango’s players to stick with them going into Tuesday.
“We haven’t seen any of the teams from the Front Range this year,” Rawles said. “Last year, we got a little taste of that at regionals, but we won regionals. The rankings are off everybody’s five best rounds, so you don’t really know what courses they played and what the conditions were. But, I’m optimistic on the team that we have going up there, and the ability of who we are taking.”