More ties for CHA golf & Soowal

by TOM UTESCHER

Chestnut Hill Academy and Haverford School golfers are courteous to a fault; each team simply refuses to beat the other.

In mid-May, the Blue Devils and Fords tied in both of their head-to-head regular season matches, and thus tied for the 2005 Inter-Ac League championship with identical records of 7-1-2. Last Tuesday, in the Inter-Ac Tournament at Aronimink Golf Club, they were at it again. In this competition, the top three individual rounds for 18 holes were added up to arrive at a team score, and CHA came away with a 231, while Haverford wound up with – you guessed it – 231.

Carding a 72 on the long par-70 course (35 out, 35 in), Chestnut Hill sophomore Mike Soowal tied with Episcopal Academy junior Reed Valutas as the individual runners-up for the day. Malvern, which finished third in the league at 7-3, made a strong showing at the tournament. Hosts of the affair, the Friars put up the best team score, 226, and had Villanova- bound senior T.J. Coady take top individual honors, with a one-over 71.

While Coady set the standard for the event fairly early in the day, Soowal and Valutas played in the last foursome to finish, along with Germantown Academy junior Matt Ehrlich (74), and Haverford sophomore James Kania (75). Amongst the other golfers with rounds in the 70’s was CHA junior Jason Ochroch, who shot a 78.

Malvern coach Gary Duda presented a well-organized tournament, complete with a welcoming banner strung across the entrance drive at Aronimink. While the temperature was cool for late May and the skies were occasionally overcast, there was almost no rain while the competitors were on the course.

Unlike the other top-three finishers, CHA’s Soowal had never played Aronimink prior to the tournament. Coady’s Malvern team and Valutas’ Episcopal squad each practice there once a week. Four of the five Blue Devils participating (CHA and co-champ Haverford each had five entries, the other teams, four) double-bogied the par-four first hole, with its long uphill fairway.

The fifth CHA player, freshman Chip Culp, found the cup in five strokes on the initial hole, and for the day he carded an 85, with a 43 on the trip out, and a 42 coming back. His classmate Rob Robertson birdied the fourth hole and nailed par on eight others as part of his 83-stroke effort. Blue Devil junior Nick Pearson recorded ten pars en route to a round of 81.

Ochroch made it around the first nine holes with a 40, then trimmed his score to a 38 on the return trip. On the back nine he had one bogie and one double bogie, but he parred the other seven holes to match three Haverford golfers (Mike Kania, Matt Fieger, and Tim Wilson) with a round of 78.

Coady, officially Malvern’s number three out of the Friars’ four entrants, led the field at the turnaround with a one-under 34 made up of two birdies, six pars, and one bogie. At one point he was two-under on the back nine, and a few late bogies gave him a final tally of 71, still clearly the score to beat.

Soowal was right on-par at the end of the trip out, with a 35, struggling on a few holes but balancing his miscues with four birdies to stay even. With five pars and two birdies, GA’s Ehrlich was also at 35 after the front nine, again, one stroke off of Coady’s lead. A 39 on the way out threw Haverford’s James Kania off the pace, and while a one-over 36 on the back nine gave him a solid final score, it didn’t get him back into the thick of the action at the top of the leader board. Ehrlich also fell back a bit, carding a 39 on the second half of the course.

Soowal recovered from bogies on the 10th and 11th holes to climb back into contention, but his ball strayed into the bunker on the 18th, where he needed a birdie to catch Coady. Instead, he cupped the ball on his fourth stroke for par, winding up in a stalemate for second with EA’s steady Valutas, who fired 36’s on the front and back nine. The Episcopal player also had a chance near the end to tie the leader from Malvern, but he missed a putt for a birdie on the 18th.