Clovers and Eagles square off in odd home/away match

The schedule for the Cloverdale's girls' golf team said that the squad was the away team on Monday afternoon when facing South Putnam.

With both squads sharing Clover Meadows as a home course starting this season, the Clovers shifted their play to the Eagle half of the course and came away with a 210-261 victory.

Cloverdale coach Matthew Langdon said that because the squad practiced exclusively on the front nine, the match did have the feel of an away day.

"It was a little different because we've practiced all the time on the front nine," Langdon said. "We have a lot of new girls this year and some of them have not seen the back nine this year.

"We set a score during the first week and we've been improving on that. The girls have gone from 225 to 215 and to 210 tonight.

Harlee Fuetter exemplified that knowledge by shooting a 43 and claiming medalist honors for the Clovers. Anna Spencer chipped in with a round of 50, followed up in the team score by a 55 from Abbie Speas and a 62 from Abby Walker.

Other Cloverdale scores included a 65 by Ambrie Kidder, a 66 from Hannah Nichols and a pair of 72s by Kelsey Nees and Lilian Boyd.

Langdon was pleased in the end by all of the rounds the Clover squad put in.

"Harlee had a personal best round tonight which was great to see," Langdon said. "Anna came back from a bad hole with back-to-back pars to help her round.

"We also saw some nice things from Kelsey, Lilian and Ambrie tonight. That helps us if we have competition for the fourth and fifth spots."

Carlee Schlatter dropped 11 strokes from the week prior to lead South Putnam with a round of 55. Alicia Haywood carded a 58 while Israel Polster and Kristi Wood both shot 74.

South Putnam coach Kevin Metz mentioned that the team improved some aspects of their play from the previous week but let some other aspects slip.

"They struck the ball a little bit better than the other day," Metz said. "We struggled on the greens. We need to eliminate four and five-putts.

"We'll need to work on chipping and putting because the strokes really start adding up when a two-putt turns into a four-putt. Do that and we can cut a few strokes off of everyone's scorecards.

"Carlee dropped 11 shots from her score last week, which showed some great improvement and we hope to see that from more of the girls."

For Langdon, scoring 210 at such an early juncture was crucial for matches later in the season.

"Scoring 210 is an important mark for us," Langdon said. "We've seen in the past five years that scores under 210 are competitive at the county match.

"The biggest thing for us is continual improvement. We've had years where we peaked early and scores started to go up.

"Teams probably won't shoot their best at the county match," Langdon added. "We talked with the girls tonight about being consistently in that 210 range.

"We'll still look for improvement because if we shoot consistently in that range, we won't have to have our best day of golf to be competitive. Other teams will have to work to get ahead of us."

Meanwhile, South Putnam travels to Southmont on Wednesday with Metz looking for the team to try and improve scoring on its first road trip of the season.

"Right now, winning matches is not our number one goal," Metz said. "We're trying to improve ourselves each day until we can get our scores down to compete with other teams.

"We want to see individual improvement and lower the team score gradually. This will be a new course for us to see but we'll still work on striking the ball and improving our putting.

At Clover Meadows GC

Medalist -- Harlee Fuetter (CL) 43

Individual Scores

Cloverdale -- Fuetter 43, Spencer 50, Speas 55, Walker 62, Kidder 65, Nichols 66, Nees 72, Boyd 72

South Putnam -- Schlatter 55, Haywood 58, Polster 74, Wood 74

Next Match: South Putnam travels to Southmont Wednesday. Cloverdale hosts Owen Valley and North Putnam next Monday.