Thayer Plewe of Montezuma-Cortez shot a 66 on Thursday to win the Montrose Red Hawks Tournament, the day after placing second in the Pagosa Springs Invitational on Wednesday. Monday, he was second in at Durango’s Hillcrest Golf Club.
In the team standings, the Panthers placed third in Montrose and Durango and tied for first in Pagosa Springs.
The Durango High School boys golf team played its third tournament in less than a week on Monday. After finishing fourth out of 17 teams on Thursday in Montrose, however, the Demons placed fifth out of eight teams on Monday at home at the Hillcrest Golf Club.
“I think they were a little disappointed yesterday after Eli (Holden) and Owen (Muraro) played so good last week in Montrose,” said DHS head coach Kirk Rawles. “Scorewise, it wasn’t our best outing.”
At the Montrose Red Hawks Tournament, held at Cobble Creek, Holden shot a 74 to place eighth out of 83 golfers, Muraro shot a 76 to finish 15th, and Zach Griswold (28th, 81), Nicholas Best (25th 83) and Emmett Arias (25th, 83) also played well for DHS.
Grand Junction, which dropped down to class 4A this year in golf, won the team title with a 215. Montrose finished second with a 217, followed by Cortez (221), Durango (231), Montrose 2 (232), Rifle (234), Eagle Valley (235), Fruita Monument (236), Telluride (245), Basalt (255), Aspen (257), Delta (264), Moffat County (264), Central Grand Junction (270), Montrose 3 (285), Meeker (293) and Cedaredge (293).
On Monday, the Demons had some beautiful weather to play in on their home course, but finished fifth with a 245.
Griswold and Best both shot 81s to lead Durango’s varsity squad while Holden shot an 83, Emmett Arias shot a 89 and Muraro shot a 95.
Durango was able to get 35 golfers into the home tournament so the team gained lots of experience. “Hillcrest was great to allow a lot of players to tee it up,” Rawles said.
Bailey Burke shot an 81 to lead the rest of the Demons, while Wynn Daniels shot an 85 and Ben Ogden, Carter Hansen and Owen Arias all shot 88s.
Montrose won the team title at Hillcrest with a 221, beating runner-up Piedra Vista by a single stroke. Montezuma-Cotez finished third with a 230, followed by Kirtland Central (238), Durango, Pagosa Springs (246), Monte Vista (257) and Farmington (263).
Noah Richmond of Montrose shot a 68 to place first, followed by Plewe and Piedra Vista’s Matthew Ahlgrim at 70.
At the Pagosa Springs Invitational on Wednesday, DHS mixed up its lineup and finished third out of six teams. Cortez and Pagosa Springs both shot a 245 to tie for first while Durango shot a 257 and was followed by Monte Vista (261), Del Norte (284) and Alamosa (291). Jonathon Smith of Pagosa won the tournament with a 72, finishing one shot ahead of Plewe (73). Wyatt Lafferty shot an 83 to finish fourth and lead Durango. Luke Carlson (seventh, 86), Ethan White (11th, 88), Finn Carithers (14th, 92), Ogden (18th, 94), Ethan James (19th, 95), Austin Romero (21st, 96) and Daniels (23rd, 97) also competed for the Demons.
Vince Lopez and Sean Curtis both shot 86s to round out Cortez’s winning team score while Airoughn VanGrandt shot an 89 and Kaden Huff shot a 93.
DHS will return to Montrose on Sept. 8 to compete at the Black Canyon golf course.
