This year’s Haddonfield golf team may have lacked high school experience entering the year, but head coach Dave Scorsolini knew it was made for tournament play.
“The pressure of being in a tournament is different, and we’ve had kids in years past who weren’t good in tournaments,” Scorsolini said. “Some people don’t like tournaments, and this team does.”
The Bulldawgs repeated as South Jersey Group I champions at the sectional tournament on May 11 at Town and Country Golf Links in Woodstown.
They followed up their sectional win with a second-place finish in Group I at the Tournament of Champions last Monday at Hopewell Valley Country Club. The Bulldawgs shot 344 as a team, finishing in second place for Group I, four strokes behind Pascack Hills. Their score was an improvement over the 358 from the 2014 Tournament of Champions.
This year’s championship team had a different makeup from 2014. Seniors Jake Klaus and Sam Timonen were the only players who returned from the foursome who went to the 2014 Tournament of Champions. This year, a group of underclassmen who all said they loved to play under the tournament spotlight brought a fresh look to the Bulldawgs.
Junior Tanner Reese golfed for Haddonfield for the first time this year after previously being on the crew team. Reese said his experience playing junior golf had him ready to succeed at the high school level.
“I’ve played in one or two tournaments before, so I knew the atmosphere,” Reese said.
Sophomore Mary McGuinness wasn’t worried about taking the course for sectionals and the Tournament of Champions for the first time. She prefers to play 18-hole tournaments rather than dual matches, which are typically only nine holes.
“I think playing 18 is better,” she said. “If you don’t do well on the first few holes, there’s just more holes to make up for it.”
Sophomore Rees Kirk said he was able to put aside the pressure of playing in sectionals for the first time.
“I wanted to perform,” he said. “I wanted to do well for the team.”
Haddonfield’s two seniors were a guiding force in 2015, using their experience from last season to improve their scores this year.
Klaus was one of the top golfers in Group I during the last two tournaments. He finished second at the South Jersey Group I tournament with a 72. He followed that up with a 77 at the Tournament of Champions, a 10-stroke improvement over the 87 he shot in 2014 at Hopewell Valley. His score was the best out of Group I golfers in the tournament.
“It wasn’t what I was thinking coming into the tournament,” Klaus said about finishing first for Group I. “I was thinking of what I needed to shoot for the team so we could win. It didn’t register with me until a kid on another team told me I won.”
Klaus said the 2014 tournament helped him gain knowledge of the course and success in his second appearance.
“Going into it, I kind of knew what I needed to shoot,” he said. “The course was a lot more familiar, so that helped a lot.”
Timonen also improved from the 2014 Tournament of Champions. He shot an 83 last Monday after shooting an 86 in the 2014 tournament.
“Just knowing the course helped a lot,” Timonen said. “They set up a little hard.”
Klaus felt the team’s unity and ability to push one another in practice helped the team improve.
“Practice is a lot more friendly competition,” he said. “We’ll always have matches with each other. It feels like it’s practice, but you also have to give yourself that competitive drive. It’s pretty cool that we’ve added a team attitude to such an individual sport.”
The team-first mentality carried through the tournament season. McGuinness said everyone was more concerned about the team’s score than their own. The focus was on getting the team back to the Tournament of Champions.
“You see your teammates on the course and you’ll check on how they’re doing,” Reece said.
Timonen said the team wasn’t too upset about coming up short of the state title. He is proud of how the team improved from its 2014 showing at the Tournament of Champions.
“Coming in second two years in a row is disappointing, but then again, we won sectionals and played good schools who had good records,” he said.
Next season, Haddonfield will try for its third straight sectional title without Klaus and Timonen. However, the Bulldawgs’ underclassmen feel they will be ready to step up to the plate.
“Losing Jake and Sam will be hard, but someone else will have to step up. We’ll all have to improve,” McGuinness said.
