Falcon Girls Golf Four-peats, Heads Back to State

The dynasty continues.  That it does, isn’t a huge surprise.   Fillmore Central girls golf was last year’s Class A State Champion.  They returned three of their top four golfers.  They lost their coach (Lane Powell) before the season started.  But the new coach, Aaron Mensink, was an assistant the past few years.  The Falcons lost their first meet (to Class AA La Crescent), but lost to no one else the rest of the year (including the Lancers in a re-match).  FC shared the TRC East title with LC, won the TRC meet over LC.  And then they dominated a small field of full teams at the Section 1A Meet to clinch a fourth straight trip to state.  After Day 1, it was Falcon (Grace Miller 82), Falcon (Madison Scheevel 86), and Falcon (Tayah Barnes 89) atop the leaderboard.  The team sat 30-strokes better (358 to 388) than nearest competitor Caledonia.  Day Two of the Section Meet at the 18-hole par-70 Willow Creek Golf Course in Rochester, was again teal and black dominant.  Fillmore Central (709) only added stokes to their team lead to best Caledonia (776), Lewiston-Altura (832), and Rushford-Peterson (1,027) by wide margins.  FC’s 709 wasn’t as good as last year (688), but better than the previous two state qualifying seasons (741* and 745).  Miller, Scheevel, and Barnes finished 1-2-3.  The junior Miller stayed consistent adding an 83 (42/41) to her first day 82 (42/40).  She notched 13 pars and two birdies all told.  For the second straight year, the All-State golfer was Section 1A medalist (165).  Grace has finished one or two each of the last three years and top ten four straight years.  Scheevel was her top competitor.  After a Day One 86 (41/45), the All-State sophomore notched the lowest score Day Two (81).  Her nine-hole 38 was the only sub-40 score of the two day tourney.  She closed the distance on teammate Miller and finished second (167) by two strokes.  Madison had 13 pars and a birdie all told.  She’s finished top three at sections the last three years and top ten the last four.  Barnes added an 86 (43/43) to her first day 89 (43/46) to shoot a 175 and take third.  It is only the senior’s second year out for golf.  She cut 30 strokes off last year’s Section Meet (107/98 > 205; 16th place).  She expands her (purely) Fillmore Central individual record of three (team) trips to state and seven section title games competed.  Cailey Rindels went 101 (51/50) and 101 (47/54) to round out FC’s scoring golfers (202 > 11th place).  Elayna Kiehne (53, 58, 52, 57 > 220) and Taylor Bushman (56, 65, 60, 62 > 243) rounded out the Falcon team.  FC’s 709 was the lowest winning score of six of the other seven known Section winners.   Springfield (720), Minneota (723) and BOLD (735) were the next three.  No other girls from the county advanced to state.  Lanesboro freshman Payton Benson (206) finished 12th.  R-P’s Grace Luhmann (227) finished in 17th place.  Section 1A had just five complete girls  teams and 37 total golfers.