The MHS golfers closed out their conference schedule with the 6th and 7th legs of the WVC Meet last week.
Merrill ended up in 7th place of 7 entries after placing 7th in all but one meet.
Merrill trailed Wausau East by 4 strokes and Marshfield by 9 after closing with a 356 at the Stevens Point C.C. on Friday.
Michael Pagel (40-44-84), Adam Yirkovsky (41-46-87), Jared Hoffman (46-46-92), Kevin Lee (46-47-93) and Coty Guenther (49-46-95) played for the Bluejays.
“Michael’s game is really coming into shape and he tied for 13th individually,” MHS coach Paul Strand said. “He ran into trouble on two holes or would have finished in the top 10. This shows how his understanding of highly competitive golf is developing very well. Adam too is rounding his game into much better consistency.”
Point closed out the season title at home with its 5th outright win with a 316. Its season tally of 45.5 points out of a possible 49 eclipsed that of Wausau West (38.5), Wis. Rapids (38.5), D.C. Everest (24.5), Marshfield (22), East (19) and Merrill (8).
Pagel tied for 24th individually for the season after posting up his best ranking of the year. Yirkovsky tied for 28th.
Team standings-SPASH 316, Rapids 327, West 328, Everest 328, Marshfield 347, East 352, Merrill 356.
The Bluejays didn’t finish quite so closely to the competition in last Tuesday’s WVC #6 held at Marshfield’s RiverEdge G.C.
Other than a 305 from SPASH, the next five squads were bunched from 327-345. Merrill scored 371.
Pagel (43-47-90), Yir­kovsky (44-47-91), Hoffman (46-46-92), Guenther (50-48-98) and Mitchell Finnegan (46-53-99) competed.
“RiverEdge is a course that has a number of holes where you don’t get a good feel for the hole when standing on the tee,” Strand said. “Adam was the only golfer who had played the course before so this was a real disadvantage to the rest of the team. Uncertainty most likely played into some of the tentative shots that were played.
“Michael played quite well and except for a bad stretch on holes 11-13 he would have been right in the mix for scoring individual points in the meet. The course knowledge that he gained will set him up real well for next year’s conference meets. Adam too had trouble on the tough 12th and 13th holes but played very consistently the rest of the way. Jared played a bit of a roller-coaster round today.”
Merrill hosted regional on Tuesday. The top four teams advanced to next Tuesday’s sectional at Greenwood Hills.