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ROCHESTER - The Rochester Zebras hosted the TRC Invitational girls golf meet at Mill Creek Golf Course and won the event on a technicality over the Manchester Squires Saturday.
Manchester shot well enough to win the event, but Jodee Ruppel's score of 102 was thrown out on a scoring problem. Heidi Wieland's 113 then had to count, dropping Manchester's score to a 422, tied with Rochester. The tie breaker then is awarded to the team with the highest fifth score. Since the Squires had no fifth score, the Zebras won the event.
Apparently, Ruppel and the three golfers she played with did not check each other's scorecards after they finished. When a dispute occurred about Ruppel's score, she was disqualified.
Despite the mistake, Manchester head coach Jody Shewman was satisfied with the play of her team. After all, they did actually shoot the best score of the eight teams at the event.
"When we came in off the front nine, we had a season best score of 198," Shewman said. "One of our goals was to be under 200. The back nine is really hard, but the girls played really well."
Katie Parker also helped to ease the pain by shooting a 96, good enough for medalist honors in a playoff.
"We keep improving," Shewman said. "We went from a 221 all the way down to a 198. There were just a few mistakes, but all of them were fixable.
Besides Parker's 96, Ruppel's 102 and Wieland's 113, Manchester also had solid scores of 104 from Dorey Bungitak and 109 from DeMara Knight.
Eastern placed third with a 432 and Tippecanoe Valley took fourth with a 462.
After the disturbing week that caused the forfeit of all of Valley's wins and a terrible performance against Warsaw, head coach Roger Moriarty was impressed with the Vikings performance.
"I thought it was pretty good," Moriarty said. "Brenda Rose had a nice round. She had a 46 on the front nine and then 57 on the back. She shot a 46 and had a nine on hole No. 9 or she could have really gotten it down low. She had a couple of penalty strokes on the back nine that hurt her."
Rose placed fifth overall with her score of 103.
"I thought we did a nice job of coming back (after the Warsaw meet)," Moriarty said. "Our team was pretty well shook up. We needed to go back and work to gather ourselves. I talked to the girls this morning before we teed off. I said to relax because we're here on our home course. They went out and shot a 217 on the front nine which is not bad. On the back nine, I think they tired out a little bit. I was pleased with them."
Moriarty feels that the team can still cut 10 strokes off of the 217 and compete for a spot in the regional.
Behind Valley was Maconaquah with a 472, Western with a 528, Caston with a 543 and Whitko with a 545.
ROCHESTER 422, MANCHESTER 422, EASTERN 432, VALLEY 462, MACONAQUAH 472, WESTERN 528, CASTON 543, WHITKO 545
Manchester - Katie Parker 96, H. Wieland 113, Dorey Bungitak 104, DeMara Knight 109, Jodee Ruppel 102
Valley - Brenda Rose 103, Wendy Tilden 109, Erica Pontious 120, Mary Gast 130, Terra Weaver 141
