The Estevan Comprehensive School (ECS) Elecs golf team won the 2016 Saskatchewan High Schools Athletic Association (SHSAA) male grass golf provincial championship at Madge Lake Golf Resort near Kamsack this weekend.
“It’s pretty cool to get a banner for the team,” said Elecs golfer Jayden Dudas, 14, who also earned a bronze medal in the individual male competition. “I think we hadn’t had one for a while.”
Jace Carlisle, Chase Gedak, Dudas and Reegan Robinson teamed up for the SHSAA gold medal shooting a two-round combined score of 469, which was 21 strokes below the second-place Yorkton Regional High School Raiders. Dudas shot a first-round score of 75 (6-over) on Friday and a second-round score of 79 (10-over) on Saturday to capture the SHSAA individual males bronze medal despite being one of the youngest golfers in the field and forgetting to bring his umbrella for the wet and windy conditions.
“It was bad out in Madge,” he said. “I got a little bit wet. I had two extra jackets in my bag. I had a rain cover on my bag too. It sort of stopped working after it got soaked though. One of my shots my club slipped out of my hand with my rain gloves on. Everything was soaked.”
Dudas said he notched a score of 1-under through the first nine holes in the first round by hitting his driver well, but an inability to drop putts and hit the green left him with a tally of 7-over on the back nine. That score of 75 earned him a first-place tie with Kindersley’s Connor Tate, a Grade 12 student who would eventually capture the individual males gold medal with a two-round tally of 149. A terrible start on the front nine on the second day where he hit 7-over on the first six holes brought him back down into the field, but he battled back to be within two strokes of a medal by Hole 16.
“I parred 16, which was really hard,” he said. “The green was sloped from right to left and if it spun at all it’s off the green four feet into the rough. It’s a really fast green.”
On the 17th hole, Dudas hooked his drive but found the ball and chipped it to score a bogey. He shanked one on the last hole for another bogey and was “surprised” to hear his name called at the end of the tourney as the bronze medallist.
“It feels pretty cool being out there playing with the high school,” said Dudas, who will next compete this November in Arizona at the Maple Leaf Junior Golf Tour nationals tournament. “I didn’t have any real expectations at all. I just tried to play good.”
