On the course these Tigers are grrrrreat!

Coach Paul Peters and his Mead High School boys golf team are keeping their immediate goals understandably modest this spring.

“Right now, we’re just trying to reach out and touch the tail of the tiger,” Peters said earlier this week. “And, to be quite honest, that tail is still a long way away.”

The tail the Panthers are chasing belongs to the Lewis and Clark Tigers, who have dominated the first three Greater Spokane League tournaments like no team in recent memory. No one has been more impressed by their accomplishment than Peters, whose Panthers have finished second in all three events – by an average margin of 23 strokes.

They made their most serious challenge to LC’s dominance at Downriver Golf Course earlier this week when their five qualifying scores totaled 374. But that only got them to within 18 strokes of the Tigers, whose top five players finished at 356, just one stroke over par.

“The numbers they’ve been putting up are historic,” said Peters, who has put together some splendid teams during his 24 years as Mead’s head coach – including one that included current PGA head professionals Matt Bunn (Hayden Lake Country Club) and Darin Vaughan (Twin Lakes Village Golf Club).

Through three GSL tournaments, in which six players compete for each team but only the low five scores count in the team total, LC is only 14 strokes over par, despite playing the first two events in wet and windy conditions at The Links and The Fairways at West Terrace.

With seniors Justin Haase, Peter Gullickson and Christian Alfaro – all of whom are three-year letterwinners – returning, LC coach Jim Travis expected his veteran team to be among the best in the GSL. But the emergence of senior Peter Williams, who spent the majority of his first three years on the junior varsity, junior Robby McKee and sophomore John-Michael Larson has made the Tigers untouchable.

“I knew we would be good, because of the solid core we had returning,” Travis said. “But having our other guys play so well has been an added bonus.

“If you have three really good players, you’re going to compete for a title. And if you have four, five or six of them, you’re going to be nearly unbeatable.”

The majority of golfers on Travis’ team have been mentored by PGA head professional Steve Prugh in the exemplary junior program offered through Manito Golf and Country Club. Even though LC uses Indian Canyon Golf Course as its home course, the Tigers spend the majority of their practice time at Manito.

“Like when we were young and spent most of our time at the park playing baseball, these guys are like that on the golf course,” Travis said. “They have a lighted putting green at Manito, and it’s not unusual to drive by and see some of these guys still out there practicing at 9 or 10 at night.

“They’re like gym rats in basketball.”

It helps, too, that the six young men get along both on and off the course.

“We all golf together throughout the summer, and we also hang out with each other outside of school and outside of golf,” Haase said. “We have team dinners together, and if we don’t have homework during the school year, we usually stay at Manito and practice as long as they’ll let us.”

Surprisingly, Haase carries the team’s highest GSL scoring average of 75.6.

“I haven’t played well in any of our tournaments, so far,” said the All-GSL returnee and one of the Tigers’ two qualifiers for last year’s State 4A tournament, in which they finished fifth. “They even dropped my score (78) at Downriver this week, because everyone else on the team played better.

“Peter Williams has made a big difference for us. He’s shocking everyone, as good as his scores have been.”

Williams has shown no signs of being intimidated by his promotion to varsity, and has the second-lowest stroke average (72.7) on the team, behind only Gullickson (70.7), another All-GSL performer and state tournament qualifier off last year’s league championship team.

Alfaro is third at 73.0, followed by McKee at 74.0 and Larson at 74.3.

“With that kind of balance and depth, it’s like having a great starting five in basketball, and three or four more really good players coming off the bench,” Travis said. “It’s been a lot of fun watching them develop through the years.”

To the point, it would seem, where they have a legitimate chance at a State 4A championship.

“We expect to win every GSL event, and we want to get as many kids to state as we can,” Haase said. “Our league only gets six (state qualifying) spots, but we think we can get four or five of those.

“And if we do, then we’ll have a good chance to win it all.”