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Eagles snatch Combs Cup by 10 strokes
It wasn't the right species flying overhead, but it was a fitting symbol, nonetheless.
Shortly after the Liberty Eagles' Walker Riley and Stephen Massei walked off the 18th hole at Stonewall Golf Club on Friday a hawk swooped down from the treetops and plucked a fish out of a lake nestled between the green and the clubhouse.
Riley had shot a 41 in the final nine-hole stroke play competition of the Combs Cup to take individual medalist honors and Massei followed with a 43. So at that moment, with those scores, Liberty was the hawk, clamping down on Fauquier and Kettle Run, leading to an eventual victory with a satisfying score of 411 to Fauquier's 421 and Kettle Run's 457.
Making the win more satisfying, two years ago, Liberty was the fish. It finished 50 strokes behind Fauquier and in last place behind Highland School.
“That was bad," Liberty junior Sam Owens said of the 2006 Cup. "But the past is past. We don’t think about that much.
"This feels good."
The Eagles also lost last season in a mano-a-mano battle with Fauquier, but improved enough from the year before to only fall by 10 strokes.
“We’ve had, pretty much, the same core group of guys for two or three years now, so we’re all getting older and more developed in our games and it’s starting to come together for us this year," Massei said. “It’s great to win it my senior year."
After Riley and Massei finished Friday, Eric Mehiel rounded out Liberty's team score with a 46. Owens had finished earlier with the same score.
Meanwhile, in Kettle Run's first appearance in the Cup, Reid Turnure shot a 46, Cameron Nay a 48, Chris Ferrell a 49 and Kyle Johnson a 50. Fauquier was led by Chris Drerenberger's 43, Greg Pappas's 44, Drew Smith's 46 and Lisa Combs' 48, but still failed to win the Cup for only the second time since 2002 (Liberty won in 2005).
“Terrible. Our top four golfers, each of them should have been at least four strokes better," FHS coach Mark Ott said. "But golf's a day to day game...Everybody hits bad shots. We just hit too many of them today."
Fauquier fell behind Liberty by seven strokes Thursday after the two-man scramble and two-man alternate shot competitions that kicked off the two-day event.
The Eagle pairing of Owens and Johnny Nettles for those back-to-back nine-hole competitions at Fauquier Springs County Club proved perfect. They led the field with a combined score of 73, beginning with an eagle on the first hole. Owens drove the green, nearly 300 yards away, and then made a long putt...See the Wednesday print edition of the Fauquier Times-Democrat for the complete story.
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