DeRome to the throne

FARMLAND — Caleb DeRome has been honored as the match medalist plenty of times throughout his high school career.

Coming down the stretch, he knew he had a shot and just had to finish off strong. A clutch putt on the final hole of the match notched him a birdie and the Patriots’ first match medalist at a sectional meet.

Yet, it wasn’t enough to get the Patriots through to the regional.

Despite DeRome becoming the first sectional medalist in Jay County High School boys golf history, the Patriots fell 14 strokes short of moving on after shooting a 343 on Monday morning at Hickory Hills Golf Course in the IHSAA Sectional 19 hosted by Monroe Central.

The top three teams will move on to Thursday’s regional at The Players Club, but the Patriots’ 343 left them in fourth place. Yorktown claimed the sectional title with a 310, while host MCHS finished as runner-up with 324. The Delta Eagles claimed the final spot at the regional with a score of 329.

“I’m super excited for Caleb,” JCHS coach Dave Haines said. “We had some pretty disappointed golfers because we knew we could have played a lot better today. That’s not what we wanted. We needed (14) strokes to come in third place and advance, but that’s the game of golf.”

DeRome will also get to move on to the regional, as the top three golfers not already on advancing teams earn regional berths. Joining him will be Winchester’s Gunnar Ludwick and Wapahani’s Landon Rabenstein, who both had 80s.

DeRome narrowly claimed the sectional crown by shooting an even 70. Yorktown’s Christian Groves finished on DeRome’s tail with a 71.

“It feels good to finally have won an 18-hole event,” DeRome said. “That was a big putt on that last hole. I knew when I hit it, that would probably be the match.”

The JCHS senior started off strong, shooting one under par through the first five holes as he had birdies on the 204-yard, par-3 second hole and the 389-yard, par-4 fifth hole.

He then hit his toughest stretch of the day, which still amounted to a pair of bogeys. His second shot on holes No. 6 and 7 both came up weak, but he recovered each time before things spiraled out of control.

“That was probably the stretch I struggled on the most, but a lot of those bogeys were good bogeys,” DeRome said. “(Beyond that) I played pretty much perfectly how I wanted to play.”

He finished off the front nine with a pair of pars and rattled six more off on the back nine.

DeRome had a pair of birdies on the back nine, coming on the 290-yard, par-4 13th hole and the 570-yard, par-5 18th.

JCHS sophomore Cody DeHoff chips onto the third green on Monday  morning. DeHoff finished with the second-best Jay County score at 88 strokes. (The Commercial Review/Andrew Balko)

 

The rest of the Patriots struggled through the match. Cody DeHoff put up the next best score of 88, which turned out to be a bogey average. The sophomore had five pars, three of which came on the back half.

Gage Sims only managed to score a 91 out of the second position and Liam Garringer shot a 94 to round out the team score.

“I fully expected Gage to advance because he’s been playing good golf but he just had a really rough day today,” Haines said. “It just takes such a small rhythm thing to get you to where you’re just not hitting it well. That’s what happened to Gage. He started missing the ball and couldn’t figure out what was going on.”

Luke Fugiett ended up with 103 strokes, which did not impact the team score.