The fall portion of the high school boys golf season ends this week for Class 4A and 3A golfers (Yeah, I know you’re saying “already?” More on that later).
And somewhere, there will be a bunch of high school girls golfers smiling.
The high school golf seasons in Southwest Washington are split in two. Officially, according to the WIAA, golf is a spring sport with a state championship held in the spring.
Because of a lack of available golf course in the area to support both boys and girls high school golf in the spring, the boys play their regular season in the fall.
The boys hold their district tournaments in October, then put their golf clubs away — well, some of them do — and bring them back out in the spring to tune up for the next level of the postseason.
There are advantages and disadvantages to playing in the fall. One disadvantage being that six-month hiatus between district and state (or district and bi-district for some).
But most elite boys golfers are year-round golfers, so there really isn’t much of a break. They spend the winter refining their game.
The one advantage to playing in the fall is the weather. The boys season begins in August and wraps up in mid-October. In some years — like last year for instance — the boys didn’t play a single round in the rain.
Compare that to the girls season, which starts in late February, trudges through the misery of March and April before maybe getting a sunny reprieve in May.
But this season hasn’t been like most seasons for the boys after we experienced one of the wettest Septembers on record.
And it doesn’t look like sunshine and short sleeves for the 4A and 3A district tournament today and Monday at Tri-Mountain Golf Course.
According to weather.com, the forecast for today calls for rain and a high of 58. Tuesday will bring showers and a high of 54.
And somewhere, that will make girls golfers in Southwest Washington smile.
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Rain or shine, the 4A and 3A district tournaments will feature some of the best high school golfers in the state.
In the 3A tournament, freshman Spencer Tibbits of Fort Vancouver goes in as the favorite, with teammate and defending district champion Trent Standard and Columbia River’s Brandon Barnes expected to challenge.
Over in 4A, Camas’ Brian Humphreys is the defending state champion, but Union’s Eddie Abellar and Camas teammate Braeden Campbell have been putting up some solid scores this fall as well.
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Some of you may have noticed the revamped Columbian.com.
We hope you like our new look and the features that come with it.
But as often is the case when improvements are made, other features can get fouled up.
Some of you may have noticed that our football player of the week vote and fall athlete of the week vote was not working correctly for a few hours last week.
For that, we apologize and it should be working just fine now … or so I’m told.
There’s another feature that is available to you online that you might not be aware of.
After we cover an event, we like to put as many photos online as we can.
If there are multiple photos available, you can access them by putting your cursor over the top photo of the story on Columbian.com. That will activate left/right arrows indicating there are other photos available. When you click on the arrows, it will start a slide show of photos.
We got some complaints that photos that appeared in the print edition of The Columbian were not on Columbian.com. Well, they were. It just wasn’t obvious where they were hiding.
So click and enjoy.
