Cream of the crop: Generals clinched district title before school started

View larger image Stonewall's Hayden Miller watches his shot during a practice this week. The Generals won the Shenandoah District title this season and have already clinched a Region B berth. Rich Cooley/Daily View larger image Stonewall's Tyler Barb. Rich Cooley/Daily

By Jeremy Stafford -- jstafford@nvdaily.com

QUICKSBURG -- For many in the high school community, August is a month typically spent in preparation.

With less than a month until the first day of school, parents spend the final weeks of summer taking their daughters back-to-school shopping, and then dropping their sons off for their final football practice of the day. School looms, and playoffs are hardly a concern for anyone. August serves as the buffer between lazy July afternoons and grueling, routineless September mornings.

It's also a month many local golf teams spend in the thick of their season, their first five matches being district matches, called minis, slated to determine a district champion.

While most football teams spend the first third of their season playing nondistrict games as a warm-up for district play, golf teams have no choice but to fight for a district crown at season's onset.

"You have to play those district minis first because you can play 18 holes before school starts," explained Stonewall Jackson coach Roger Wilkins, who is in his first year coaching golf. "Once school starts, then you're down to nine holes, and then it's just a much different match. I mean, nine holes, you get going, you get warmed up on [holes] one or two or three, and it's done.

"So it's really a different thing once school starts."

The mini's consist of five matches, each played at the home course of a school in the district. The total strokes for each team are added up following the five matches and the team with the fewest is named district champion. On Aug. 17, more than two weeks before the area's first football game, Stonewall Jackson won the Shenandoah District and qualified for the Region B tournament.

"It's kind of relaxing," junior Tyler Barb said of advancing to regionals. "It's relaxing 'cause we don't have to worry about anything until October in the regional tournament."

Senior Dallas Foltz agreed: "It's just a lot of weight off our shoulders for these matches that are coming up."

For Wilkins, who coaches boys basketball at Central, the experience of qualifying for regionals after only five matches was inconceivable only months ago.

"It's just unreal, I've never experienced a sport like that before, it's really different. I'm really more of a vocal type coach, too, and in golf you can't be vocal," Wilkins laughed. "But I enjoy it, I like being around the kids, and I learn lot from them. Hayden [Miller], all those top five kids, they're pretty fundamental, and they teach the younger kids.

"It's really nice as an adult to watch kids help each other sometimes, and its pretty touching, really, to see them help one another."

A problem arises, though, with qualifying for postseason play so early in the year: The Generals haven't played in a competitive, must-win district match since August, and until Tuesday, haven't played in a match at all since Sept. 10.

"It is challenging, I think, that once you do advance, sometimes you can be saying to yourself, 'Well it really doesn't matter, we've already qualified,'" Wilkins said. "But for the most part I think that these boys have stayed focused on this, I really do."

In fact, Wilkins says his team's only downfall, as of yet, is on the green.

Indeed, at Shenvalee Golf Resort in New Market, Coleman Johnson, Miller, Barb and Foltz have little trouble reaching the green of a par four hole in two strokes. Their play seems second nature as the foursome drives and chips to within 10 feet of the hole, joking and jesting all the while.

Then they all two-putt, making par on a hole which only moments before had bent to their every whim.

"Several of them get on in two ... but they're getting par or bogey or even a double," Wilkins explained. "In order to win and to advance even out of regionals, they're gonna have to putt better. We're gonna have to get more birdies and pars than we've been doing."

Luckily for the Generals, golf is that unique sport which requires nothing more than time and desire. To have a successful practice, no coach, no team or playbook memorization is needed. All that's wanted is a sunny day and a set of clubs.

And with the experience Wilkins has on his team, his players hardly need any direction or advice.

"We're at the point now where if we snap a shot we know what we did wrong," Miller said. "Or if we slice and everything we can go to the range ... and we can work on it. So we can coach ourselves at this point."

All the coaching and all the preparation will make itself known on Oct. 5 at the Region B tournament. This isn't the first time the Generals have qualified for regionals, but with Miller and Foltz in their final year of high school, this regional tournament carries with it an added importance. And when tournament play begins, the two seniors know the idle trips to the golf course, and the complacency with pars and bogies, are finished.

"It's set in a couple times where I'm like, 'Hey, I'm a senior, this could be my last year playing golf," Miller said. "But me and Dallas are going to try our hardest to make it to states, as well as everyone else.

"There's something in there for us, we don't want to quit yet."