After squeaking through the sectional tournament at Gunter’s Landing on a day when their score—and the weather—was less than ideal, Russellville’s boys heard the same message over and over again throughout last week from head coach Ryan Brewer.
“Every stroke counts,” Brewer said. “That’s what I’ve been telling these guys all week. In this game, every single stroke counts.”
Considering that they qualified for sub-state play by that exact margin (a single stroke), it’s doubtful that Brewer’s players needed any further convincing. If they did, they certainly got it on Monday in Scottsboro.
The Golden Tigers put together their best 18-hole round of the season, shooting a 315 at Goose Pond Colony Resort. They finished four strokes behind first-place Guntersville but, more importantly, one stroke ahead of third-place Etowah. The top two teams at sub-state advance, so for the third consecutive year Russellville’s boys have earned the right to play for a state championship.
“We’re state-bound,” said Brewer, whose team will compete with Guntersville and the sub-state champion and runner-up from the South next Monday and Tuesday on the Links Course at Opelika Grand National in the state tournament. “We’ve struggled all year. This was about playing good at the right time. I knew our guys were capable of this. I knew it was there. I’ve known it all season long. We just hadn’t seen it yet.
“I was super-pleased that we were able to do it when it counted.”
Sophomore Jaceton Murray led the way for the Golden Tigers on Monday with a 75.
“He played really well,” Brewer said. “He played lights-out.”
Eighth-grader Eric Boutwell followed with a 79, and sophomore Brayden Bendall shot 80. Senior Bailey Motes rounded out the scoring for Russellville with an 81. Prior to Monday, the Golden Tigers’ previous best round in an 18-hole tournament had come a couple of weeks earlier when they posted a score of 320—also at Goose Pond.
“That was our best round—until today,” Brewer said. “This was the first tournament all year where we won any hardware. It came at the right time. That’s the way it is with golf. You always want to play well when it matters most. In high school golf, the regular season has no bearing whatsoever on the playoffs. It doesn’t matter for seeding—nothing. It all comes down to how you do in three tournaments at the end of the year. That’s it.”
The Golden Tigers nearly failed to make it past the first of those three tournaments, barely surviving a cold and windy day at Gunter’s Landing last week to finish fourth at sectionals. [The top four teams advance to sub-state]. The weather improved substantially for Monday’s match at Goose Pond, and so did Russellville’s level of play.
“It was beautiful today,” Brewer said. “Low seventies, no more than a three- or four-mile-an-hour wind all day. Last week, it was a 20-mile-an-hour wind, and it was cold.”
The weather changed, as did the venue and the Golden Tigers’ performance, but the margin of victory remained the same.
One stroke.
That didn’t surprise Brewer in the least.
“Not really,” he said on Monday afternoon while driving back from Scottsboro. “We did this last week.”
Speaking of history repeating itself, this marks the third consecutive season that the Golden Tigers have finished as the sub-state runner-up to Guntersville. Back in 2015, Russellville won its first-ever state championship; last year, the Golden Tigers finished runner-up to St. Paul’s.
Asked if his young and relatively inexperienced team was capable of getting over the hump and beating Guntersville after finishing behind the Wildcats at both sectionals and sub-state, Brewer didn’t hesitate.
“Oh yeah, absolutely,” he said. “They’ve got a great team. But when we shoot well, we can play with anybody.”
