Cougar golf wins in tie-breaker

The importance of the fifth man score being critical in determining whether you win or lose a meet, never became more prevalent than Wednesday night when North Putnam played against Cascade and Owen Valley at Twin Bridges.

With Cascade's Garrett Compliment carrying a 36.4 average this year, the Cougars had to pull it all together to bring in a win. Fortunately for North Putnam fans, the Cougars pulled out the close with via a tie-breaker.

All three schools had some great scores showing up in the scorebook early. Garrett Compliment and Franceville from Cascade came in with a 36 and 37 respectively. Cougars Danny Smith and Austin Judy both scored a 38. While still waiting for the fifth player to come in, there was only a four-stroke advantage for Cascade. Finally Preston Porter reported a 49 for the Cougars while his counterpart for Cascade reported a 55. With that score the Cougars were able to scrape Logan Grim's 53 to declare a tie 168-168. This forced a tie breaker where normally teams would look at the next score for each team. However the scraped 53 from Grim became the tie-breaking card to declare the Cougars a winner.

"When you are playing against Cascade with Garrett pretty much a par player and knowing Franceville was doing great, it could be either of us," Patrick said.

With the night being one of the better golfing days in the last two weeks, other scores were coming in lower. Jake Holtze suffered two penalties, which kept him above his consistent 40 game, shooting a 43. Coming back to the course for competition after not playing for a week was Logan Grim with a 53. Emmett Holsapple shot a good score of 44 but his score wasn't counted in the win because he was playing sixth man. Aaron Green shot a 61 and Austin Wright a 57.

North Putnam's next meet will be at the Tiger Cub Invitational Saturday at Windy Hill in Greencastle.