Athens Drive claims Southwest Wake girls golf title, sweeps awards

Athens Drive left no Southwest Wake Athletic Conference award behind.

On Tuesday, the Jaguars capped a perfect season – having won every SWAC nine-hole match – with an 18-hole tournament victory at Bentwinds Country Club in Fuquay-Varina.

Athens’ top player, sophomore Jennifer Chang, was player of the year – an award based on lowest strokes-per-nine-holes average instead of votes. She also won the tournament, while Dave Snyder, the team’s coach, completed the blue-and-orange sweep by winning coach of the year.

“The team is wonderful with how they support each other,” Snyder said. “It was after about the fourth match, we had on four in a row and the freshmen were worried about messing up the team mojo. The (upperclassmen) found out about, approached them and said ‘No, we want you to come get us because that makes the whole team better.’ When they did that, I was like ‘Oh this is good, because now we’re a team.’”

Chang scorched the field with a 5-under 67. The next-closest player was Holly Springs’ Natalie Petersen (74). Athens Drive’s 227 as a team (freshman Kayla Parsons added an 82) was well ahead of runner-up Middle Creek (262), Panther Creek (263) and Green Hope (266).

“I was struggling with my putting; but in this event particularly, it was working for me. I made a lot of putts today and the shots were great,” Chang said.

Chang’s best competition for conference player of the year, other than Petersen, was Parsons.

“We went back-and-forth,” Parsons said.

The reward for Athens Drive is a trip to regionals. Teams don’t qualify for regionals, but if a team gets three players – in 4A, the criteria is a strokes-per-nine-holes average of 50 or below – to the regionals it has a chance to finish top three in that regional and then qualify as a team for states.

Athens Drive’s Rachel Lipman needed to shoot a 98 or lower to meet the 50-stroke mark. She shot 98.

The SWAC tournament counts double the amount of points as other regular-season matches, but for the most part teams stayed in order. The only deviation from the final regular season standings was a switch: Cary finishing seventh and Apex eighth.

This story was originally published October 13, 2015 at 8:18 PM with the headline "Athens Drive claims Southwest Wake girls golf title, sweeps awards."