Sydney Shrum moves on to regional, Clovers place sixth

Monday, September 17, 2012
Cloverdale senior Sydney Shrum chips onto the No. 9 green at Foxcliff Golf Course during Saturday's IHSAA sectional.

MARTINSVILLE -- Instead of traveling to the familiar Forest Park Golf Course in Brazil for its sectional, Cloverdale pointed the bus south and attacked the course at Foxcliff Golf Course.

Senior Sydney Shrum struggled during her round, recording a score of 89. Her score was the lowest individual score on a non-advancing team, thus she will play in Saturday's IHSAA Roncalli Regional.

Both Shrum and Cloverdale head coach Matthew Langdon knew Saturday's round at Foxcliff wasn't a typical outing. As in all sports, all that matters is you live to fight another day and that's exactly what Shrum accomplished.

"Any way you can get through," Langdon said. "It's not the way she played for sure. She would have liked to have shot better, but with individual they take the top three and then the slate's clean and everybody's even. She gets to go for that goal she set and try to get to state. She set it last year after falling short. I do think she has the game for it."

Harlee Fuetter followed Shrum's 89 with a 109, while Makayla Moore carded a 117. Anna Spencer shot a 125 and Payton Dorsett rounded out the Cloverdale golfers with a score of 140.

As a team, Cloverdale placed sixth out of six teams, but Langdon said they team accomplished what it went into the match to do.

"We saw some scores that were improved from Deer Creek, which I think even today, this course is harder," Langdon said. "I like to see the improved scores, even with a pretty young team. Obviously we lose our solid No. 1, but other than that our top five has two freshmen, a sophomore and a junior.

"We got what we wanted out of it -- the experience. Each one of them had some good stretches in there."

The start of the tournament was delayed for heavy fog. Following the delay, Shrum, who had posted a low score on the course in a previous practice round, simply couldn't find her game. However, she battled through the struggles and after scoring a 47 on the front nine, cut five strokes from her score to post a 42 on the back nine.

Langdon acknowledged the slow start was a contributing factor in Shrum's round, but also noted the course is one that can give golfers problems.

"This is a course that some of the girls do struggle with," Langdon said. "There's some tricks to it where you can run into some hazards, run into some hard shots coming into the greens with true trouble and I think it just kind of snowballed from that start.

"Then you start thinking 'what will it take to get out' and then instead of playing your own game, you're just trying not to mess up. She's done enough work in the off-season where she deserved to get through and from here on out, we'll see what happens."

Shrum will compete at the Roncalli Regional Saturday at 8:15 a.m.

At Foxcliff Golf Course

1. Whiteland 346, 2. Center Grove 350, 3. Greenwood 380, 4. Martinsville 384, 5. Owen Valley 438, 6. Cloverdale 440

Medalist -- Alexa West (Whiteland) 79

Advancing Individuals -- 1. Shrum (CHS) 89, 2. Meredith Dalton (M), 91, 3. Taylro Wilson (M) 91

Cloverdale -- Shrum 89, Moore 117, Spencer 125, Fuetter 109, Dorsett 140