ARCANUM — Twin Valley South’s Nathan Osborn has been close to winning a ‘big’ regular season golf tournament on several occasions, but the gold medal has always just been out of reach.
That is until he won the Joe Middleton Invitational at Beechwood Golf Course on Saturday, Aug. 26. As a team, South finished seventh.
“Nathan played a really good round of golf. He got off to a good start and never really struggled at all. He’s been waiting his entire high school career to be able to win one of these big invites,” South coach Darcy Robinson said. “He has always been close, but for various reasons, it hadn’t happened until now. Last year with this tournament, he would have won it, but rain cut the tournament short and three or four birdie holes were negated, causing him not to come out on top. This year, the weather was fantastic, and he just played with a lot of determination and confidence. It was good for him to get that monkey off his back! Hopefully, it will be the first of several yet to come in his career.”
Osborn fired a winning score of 72.
Robinson said Willie Bowman had a solid round too, shooting a 93 and Chance Parks followed closely with an even 100. Connor Bradley shot a career best score of 107.
“I’m pleased overall with how hard the guys are working to improve. I continue to hope that we will peak just in time for the sectional tournament,” she said.
National Trail shot its best team score of the season and placed 15th. Senior Chris Brubaker led the way with a 96, Sophomore Tyler Porter shot a career best 110 followed by Savanna Abner who was filling in for the boys, who carded a 113. Freshman Caleb Miller played his best round of the year firing a 116 while Sam Roberts shot a 119 and Brad Sorrell came in with a 124.
On Thursday, Aug. 24, South traveled to Liberty Country Club to play Preble Shawnee and came away with a 179-218 win.
“I would say that Liberty is the toughest course we’ve seen so far this season, yet we kept our team score under 180. Nathan and Willie had their usual good rounds. It’s nice to know that you can count on those two to bring the team’s average down pretty much every night,” Robinson said. “I’m really pleased with how Chance Parks has played in our last two matches, scoring a 47 each round. If he can consistently come in with scores like that, then we’re going to be tough to beat down the stretch. Our wins really do boil down to how our three and four guys play. If they have good rounds and we add their scores to Nate’s and Willie’s, we usually come away with the win.”
On Tuesday, Aug. 22, South beat Arcanum 181-190.
“It wasn’t our best match of the season, but we’re certainly glad to walk away with another victory. I was a little concerned about how we would recover after yesterday. We’ve been playing a lot of matches these past two weeks, and I think we’re getting a little mentally and physically drained. It’s always tough the week the guys go back to school too, trying to adjust to the new schedule and all,” Robinson said. “I was pleased with our top three guys’ scores. They’ve been pretty consistent so far this season. If we want to continue to vie for the CCC championship, we need to get better, more consistent scores from our number 4-6 guys. And that’s what it is: just a matter of being inconsistent. It’s not that they are incapable of posting good scores, it’s just that we don’t know when they’re going to play well and when they’re not. Golf is such a difficult game; consistency is one of the toughest things to master. But overall, I’m very proud of where we are right now in the season. Hopefully we’ll continue to improve as we get deeper into the season, and be able to peak in time for tournament matches.”
South’s only match of the week was scheduled for Monday, Aug. 28 against Covington.
National Trail was scheduled to play Tuesday at White Springs against Ansonia.
