Chesterton girls golf team finishes third at DAC tourney at Sand Creek and sophomore Taylor Kisic places sixth with an 88

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

When putts curl out, chips run long and the rough starts to eat drives, high school golfers tend to finish their rounds thinking they played worse than they actually did.
It’s not until they start to hear scores from other golfers start to trickle in that they realize the course made their competitors’ confidence wobbly at times too.
Chesterton sophomore Taylor Kisic was the first name called to the table at the awards ceremony to accept her sixth-place plaque.
She wasn’t expecting any hardware would come her way when she lamented the five near misses with the putter. It’s not that she was unhappy with shooting an 88, the best on the team at the DAC Tournament at Sand Creek Country Club on Monday afternoon, she just knew how much lower she could have gone.
Holding the plaque made her realize she had more reason to be proud than full of regret.
“I’ve broken into the 80s before but today was the first I broke into the 80s in a major tournament like this,” said Kisic, who didn’t play an 18-hole round until the one she played for Chesterton early in her freshman season. “I hit the ball really well today. Everything went pretty straight. I could have hit a couple of more greens. I’d say the No. 1 thing to work on is putting, especially the downhill putts. Take away the (five) three-putts and I’m good.”
Chesterton finished third with a 375. Lake Central (339) won and Crown Point placed second with a 369 and LaPorte (383), followed by Valparaiso (394), Portage (482), Michigan City (516) and Merrillville (536).
Valpo freshman Kennedy Gutierrez was low medalist with a 73 and Lake Central’s Allie Huppenthal was the only other golfer to break 80 with a 79, followed by Victoria Schilling (LC) 84, Piper Urbanski (LC) 85, Anna Menne (LP) 87, Kisic 88, Hailey Ziolkowski (CP) 89, May Parks (LC) and Kristin McCoy (CHS) 91 and in 10th, Jessie Harper (CP) 92.
The tournament was played on the Creek and Marsh nines.
A natural athlete, Kisic took to golf remarkably quickly. She plays basketball so well that she was the top JV player as a freshman and is such a good runner that she and three teammates, including two other freshmen, made it to the state track and field meet in the 4x800 relay.
Many golfers go their whole lives without breaking 40 for nine holes. Kisic shot a 38 at Sandy Pines in a match vs. Kankakee Valley on Aug. 21, a 172-182 win for the Trojans. She was even par going into the final hole and attributed the low score to three birdies, two coming when she drained long putts.
McCoy, golfing out of the No. 1 spot for the second year in a row, could have finished as high as third in the DAC tourney if had she had made her way around her home course in typical fashion.
“I had a really rough day today,” McCoy said. “I know what I need to work on.”
Which is?
“Everything,” she said, then laughed.
Actually, most of her troubles came around the greens.
“I had some really good drives, and my irons were really good. That saved me from going higher. I had really low confidence in my chipping today and my putting was OK, just nothing was falling,” she said. “Everything would be 2 to 3 feet away.”
Having the sort of chipping day that McCoy had would leave some golfers heading to the chipping practice area with a shag bag for the next few days. McCoy, who has a well-rounded game, doesn’t attack it in that manner.
“If I have a bad day chipping like I did today, I might spend 10 more minutes on the chipping green,” McCoy said. “I won’t spend too much more because I don’t want to malnourish the rest of my game. I don’t want to spend too much time on chipping and have the same thing happen putting.”
McCoy’s drive on Marsh 1 came to a stop an estimated 275 yards from the tee box.
“It’s amazing how far Kristin can hit the ball,” said Kisic, who called the 257-yard drive she hit Monday possibly the best of her life.
Genevieve Driscoll was next for the Trojans with a 96. Driscoll has gone as low as 41 for nine this season, at Culver Academy, and 85 for 18, at Legacy Hills. She opened the season with an 88 at Sandy Pines.
“I think I got in my head a lot today,” Driscoll said. “I was really nervous coming into it because I hadn’t played in DAC before. I started off rough, so I think that put a block on my mental attitude. I wasn’t as positive as I should have been.”
She doesn’t anticipate encountering the same nerves a year from now in the DAC tourney.
“Now I’ve played in it,” she said.
Sophomore Liz Dodds was the fourth and final scorer for the Trojans, carding an even 100.
The final DAC standings, which are calculated by blending the regular season matches and Monday’s conference tourney: 1. Lake Central 14-0; 2. Crown Point 11-3; 3. Chesterton 10-4; 4. Valparaiso 8-6; 5. LaPorte 7-7; 6. Portage 4-10; 7 (tie). Merrillville and Michigan City 1-13.
The Trojans next play in the Pat Ford Invitational at Beechwood in LaPorte on Friday, a 9 a.m. tee time. They play in the Valparaiso sectional at Valparaiso Country Club on Friday, Sep. 19, a 9 a.m. start.