Final scores from the girls state high school tournaments: 5A, 4A

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Gillian Vance points out that she and Jennifer Kupcho call themselves “Team Kupance”.

And why not — at least this month, which has been a memorable May for the two graduating Colorado high school seniors? A week ago in Oregon, they teamed up and advanced to match play at the inaugural U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship. And in the first round of matches, they came ever so close to knocking off the No. 3 seed, leading 2 up through 14 before falling in 20 holes.

Then they both returned to their home state and promptly each won a state high school title on Tuesday — Vance in Class 5A and Kupcho (above) for the second straight year by a double-digit margin in 4A.

“That was definitely our goal,” Vance (below) said Tuesday when the second round of the 5A tournament was canceled for weather-related reasons, giving her the victory after a first-round 68. “We call ourselves Team Kupance. We thought Team Kupance could go to Oregon and play our best, then go back and win state. We’ve made it so far together. We definitely wanted to go out with a bang together.”

And so it was for the friends who first met about eight years ago at an CJGA 10-and-under tournament at Cordillera west of Vail.

At the 4A state tournament at River Valley Ranch Golf Club in Carbondale, Jefferson Academy’s Kupcho became the first back-to-back girls high school state champion in Colorado since Salida’s Emily Wood won in 4A in 2009 and ’10. Overall, Kupcho is just the seventh golfer to claim two or more Colorado girls state high school titles. She joins Ashley Tait of Mullen (3), Lynn Ann Moretto of Cherry Creek (3), Becca Huffer of Littleton (2), Jennifer McCormick of Columbine (2), Kelly Jacques of Skyline (2) and Wood (2). The Wake Forest-bound Kupcho finished third, second, first and first in her four state high school meets.

A year after winning the 4A state title by 14 strokes, Kupcho posted a 10-stroke victory on Tuesday. In a day that started off sunny but turned cold, rainy and thundery — play was interrupted twice at River Valley Ranch on Tuesday — she shot a 3-under-par 69 despite closing with a double bogey. That gave her a 5-under 139 total.

“It feels pretty great to finish out that way,” said Kupcho, the 2014 CWGA Player of the Year. “It was a lot of fun playing with Kylee (Sullivan of Cheyenne Mountain) and Erin (Sargent of Silver Creek). We had two rain delays, which was kind of a downer. It was crazy, but we had a lot of fun out there.”

Kupcho had one significant blip early on Tuesday, making a double bogey after losing a ball in the weeds following her tee shot on No. 4. So how did she respond? She merely birdied five of the next seven holes — including making a 25-foot putt on No. 9 — all sandwiched around the first lightning delay. If there had been any suspense left regarding who would win the individual title, that certainly ended it.

“I had two doubles yesterday and I bounced back really well from those,” she said. “That carried over to today because I wanted to do the best I could and bounce back as well as I could.”

Kupcho finished with 14 birdies in 36 holes — seven each day. Strangely, though, she had far more double bogeys (4) than bogeys (1).

Sullivan placed second at 149 — marking her third straight top-six showing at state and leading Cheyenne Mountain to its third consecutive 4A team championship. At 499, the Indians ended up five strokes ahead of runner-up Colorado Academy.

Sargent finished third individually at 151.

Vance, who wrapped up her career at Dakota Ridge and will play at the University of Colorado beginning in the fall, prevailed in the 5A meet at the Olde Course at Loveland thanks to her 4-under-par 68 on Monday. That’s the best score posted at either the 5A or 4A girls state high school tournament since 2012.

Vance won by two over Regis Jesuit senior Sydney Gillespie, who shot a 70 Monday while playing in the same group as Vance. While Gillespie didn’t get a chance to catch the leader on Tuesday, the Colorado Christian University recruit did finish in the top 10 individually all four years at state and she can take some joy in Regis (left) winning its second consecutive 5A team title and fourth state crown in the last six seasons. The Raiders prevailed by 13 over Rock Canyon.

Morgan Sahm of Grandview, Alexis Chan of Rock Canyon and Ashlyn Kirschner of Ralston Valley shared third place individually at 73.

Vance, who like Kupcho competed in the 2014 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship, won when Tuesday’s final round was washed out due to heavy overnight rain and considerable standing water at the Olde Course at Loveland. The results from Monday’s opening round became final, making the event an 18-hole tournament.

“I told myself we were going to play,” said Vance (below). “We were about to head out of our hotel room and the coach (Levi Bartholomew) called me and said, ‘Hi state champion.’ I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I was really shocked.”

Tournament officials reported too much puddling at the Olde Course on Tuesday morning to hold the final round. Normal tournament policy for the state high school meets — both girls and boys — is to make round 1 results final if round 2 is canceled. Competitors and coaches were notified of that possibility on Monday.

In a similar scenario, the 1985 boys state high school tournament, won by Pomona’s Jakob Green at Fort Collins Country Club, was reduced to 18 holes because of snow.

Vance knew on Monday that there was a chance, given the forecast, that the first round might be the only round. After starting out the tournament with a bogey after a poor opening tee shot, she came on strong by going bogey-free the rest of the day in cold conditions, making five birdies.

“It’s completely fine that it’s an 18-hole tournament,” she said. “Everybody would have love to have played but if the weather doesn’t permit it, that’s just how it is. Either way, I’m just extremely grateful.

“This means the world to me. It really puts a smile on my face to go out with a bang, which is exactly what I wanted to do. I had a blast.”

When it comes to running LPGA-USGA Girls Golf of Northern Colorado, Kim Stiner says her husband, Gale, is known as “Coach Fun”.

Which, of course, makes him perfect for the LPGA-USGA Girls Golf program based at the Olde Course in Loveland.

The national LPGA-USGA Girls Golf concept has been a big hit in recent years — it’s grown from 5,000 participants to about 50,000 in just the last five years — and a big reason is that key ingredient: the fun part.

“We focus hard on making it fun,” said Kim Stiner, the LPGA head professional at the Olde Course and the director of LPGA-USGA Girls Golf of Northern Colorado. “Gale says it’s almost like we trick them into learning through fun. We use contests, games, anything we can think of. If you’re just hitting balls on the driving range, it can get pretty boring, so you need to push creativity. A big part of the success is the fun the kids have.”

The Northern Colorado chapter (see photos) is one of 10 LPGA-USGA Girls Golf programs in Colorado. There are several in the Denver metro area — the one started and operated by the CWGA at CommonGround Golf Course in Aurora, along with others at The First Tee of Denver, The First Tee of Green Valley Ranch, Golden/Westminster, Valley Country Club, and the Family Sports Center in Centennial.

Other sites around the state include Northern Colorado in Loveland, Colorado Springs at Cherokee Ridge Golf Course, Montrose at Black Canyon Golf Club, and the Pueblo YMCA. CLICK HERE to see all the sites and contact information. 

Some of the 2015 programs start as soon as this week. Most at least run through the bulk of the summer when many kids are out of school. At CommonGround, which is owned and operated by the CGA and CWGA, the program will be held weekly on Friday afternoons beginning June 12.

The CWGA has a big stake in the developmental junior program’s success, not only at CommonGround but around the state. After all, it’s an ideal portal for bringing girls into the game — and helping them develop — through fun activities, instruction and simply playing on the course.

“LPGA-USGA Girls Golf programs have great potential for girls to participate together in a group environment and to have fun,” said CWGA executive director Ann Guiberson. “It’s very social. Girls participation in the game is growing, but we have to keep at it. We have to keep encouraging girls.  They are a demographic that can lead the next generation of golf.”

Kim Stiner oversees one of the more successful local LPGA-USGA Girls Golf programs. It’s been in place at the Olde Course since 2005.

“The first year, I had no idea what to expect,” Stiner said. “The LPGA said we’d probably have no more than 20 girls. We had 75. I was like, ‘Wow, this is awesome.’ We’ve been as high as the 90s (one year). The last few years it’s been around 50. We haven’t done any advertising other than flyers in schools. It seem to get a lot of word of mouth. It’s a nice size, manageable.

“Before we started this, our town had three courses but not really anything (specifically) for girls. They were just thrown into a mix of mostly boys. With this, we’ve tweaked it over the years and made it our own program. It’s a work in progress. We (Kim and Gale) both call it our labor of love.”

The Northern Colorado chapter draws girls (age 7-17 of any golf skill level) not only from Loveland but from other neighboring communities. And Stiner and her husband, who’s the clubhouse manager at the Olde Course, have certainly seen it pay dividends. For instance, six girls on Loveland-area high school golf teams this week qualified for one of the two state tournaments. (Coincidentally, the 5A state meet this year is scheduled for the Olde Course, on May 18-19.)

But the Northern Colorado chapter draws all sorts of participants.

“Some have maybe been in other programs, others may not have touched a club,” Kim Stiner said. “Some may be entering high school golf. What’s nice is there’s something for everyone (including 3-hole, 6-hole, 9-hole and 18-hole play days). I feel strongly about girls that they’re very social and want to fit in, and we make that possible. They don’t have to worry or stress about not being good enough.”

Different LPGA-USGA Girls Golf programs run things differently, but in Loveland, they devote one day per week in June and July to playing on the course, and one to practice, instruction and games.

Moving forward, Guiberson would like to see more coordination among the different programs in the state. “We want to pull all the programs together to see where we can share some best practices and resources,” she said.

Though LPGA-USGA Girls Golf is a countrywide program — grants are provided from the national organizations — it’s administered locally. That takes shape differently at various local chapters.

“We have to do quite a bit locally to get the participants and to knock on doors of school districts and the Girl Scouts to try to get to the audience,” Guiberson said.

Besides having various chapters in Colorado, LPGA-USGA Girls Golf owes some of its organizational success to a Coloradan, former USGA president Judy Bell, a Colorado Springs resident. Bell facilitated the link-up between the LPGA Foundation and the USGA.

“She was of our advocate with the USGA,” said Nancy Henderson, president of the LPGA Foundation. “She was the one who said the USGA needed to partner with us on this program. Since then, we couldn’t have asked for a better partnership. It not only adds credibility, but to have a presence at the U.S. Women’s Open means so much to us.”

Nowadays, about 300 communities around the country have LPGA-USGA Girls Golf programs. The initiative, which took form in 1989, has directly affected several big-name players, including one-time participants Brittany Lincicome and Morgan Pressel, both prominent LPGA Tour players.

Literally.

Two of them, in fact.

Southard, the golf operations manager for the city of Loveland, is not only a local expert regarding pace-of-play issues, but a national one. He teaches a seminar on the subject each year at the national Golf Industry Show. Last week, he conducted a USGA webcast for a group in Montana. And next week he’ll be in Oregon to teach a USGA seminar that’s attended by golf professionals, general managers, course owners and superintendents.

And, of course, there are those books: Mastering Pace of Play While Maximizing Revenue (2010) and Golf: The Complete Guide to Mastering Pace of Play (2013).

Suffice it to say that Southard is a man on a pace-of-play mission.

“Here’s what’s funny: This is so important to our customers, but somehow our industry has dropped the ball on this topic,” Southard said by phone on Monday.

But if Southard has anything to do about it — and he undoubtedly will — that will change.

Since moving to Colorado about eight years ago — and becoming the golf operations manager four years ago — Southard has implemented what he preaches at Loveland’s three golf courses, most notably Mariana Butte and the Olde Course at Loveland.

The result, he said, are midday weekend rounds that average 40 minutes less than they did prior to his tenure, with the norm during those busy times now being about 4 hours, 35 minutes at Mariana Butte and 4:20 at the Olde Course.

Where the Loveland courses used to issue 8-12 rain checks each weekend to people upset with long rounds and slow play, they now issue a very small percentage of that number.

“It used to be really bad. It was embarrassing to drive around the course on the weekend,” said Southard, who cut his teeth as a course superintendent.

How important is this issue to Southard? He estimates he spends 400-500 hours a year working on it, mostly on a voluntary basis. He has seen a dearth of effective strategic information on the topic — be it books, manuals or sharing of best practices — so he’s doing what he can to fill some of the void.

Though Southard doesn’t think USGA efforts such as “Tee It Forward” and “While We’re Young” get to the crux of the issue, he at least credits the association for being one of the first major golf organizations to truly champion a cause which addresses an issue that so aggravates many golfers. (Note: The PGA of America joined with the USGA to launch “Tee It Forward.”)

Southard believes current efforts to speed up the flow of play focus far too little on course operations.

“There’s a lot of things course (management) can control, but one thing we can’t control very well is the golfer,” he said.

For instance, one thing Southard calls “the lowest hanging fruit” in reducing round times is eliminating a widely held practice of having a beverage cart move around the course against the direction of play, stopping groups as it goes. Far less disruptive, he said, is having a parked beverage cart at key junctures of the front and back nine — and never on a par-3.

“We’re the knuckleheads if we can’t see how (beverage carts working backward through the course) affects the flow of play,” said Southard, who estimates that change alone can reduce round times on busy days by 20 minutes.

A key in effectively managing the flow of players around a course is to identify the two or three bottlenecks that cause backups and effectively deal with them, Southard indicated. Par-5s reachable in two or long par-3s often present problems in that regard.

“Pace of play boils down to how long it takes people to leave a hole, on average,” Southard said.

Many of the things that bottleneck play can be controlled from a golf operations standpoint — for instance, not having that beverage cart hanging out on a par-3, a cart-path-only policy on a given hole, a problematic bunker or other hazard on a hole, even a poorly situated restroom or water jug, plus more obvious things like hole location and length. So by making some adjustments, those average hole exit times can be reduced. And saving 30 seconds per group on a given hole can make the difference between continuous flow and constant logjams, even with tee-time intervals from 8-9 minutes.

Besides the beverage cart operations, Southard said another key to reducing round times during busy periods is effectively customizing the tee-time set-up. In other words, don’t have the same tee-time intervals all day or even weekdays vs. weekends.

In the morning, when play is moving faster, the tee times can be tighter. And in the afternoon, when play slows down, spread out the intervals. At Mariana Butte, for instance, Southard said the course will sometimes alternate between seven- and eight-minute tee times in the morning, then lengthen the interval to nine minutes in the middle of the day.

“The industry (generally speaking) does the opposite,” he said. “They’ll have starter times (a tee time purposely unused) in the morning when people are playing faster, then they’ll stop having starter times at 11 or so. So they’ll have fewer (filled) tee times when people are playing faster and more (filled) tee times when people are playing slower.

“Every course in America would be better off (customizing tee-time intervals on busy days). But it’s hard to change the way things have always been done.”

But golfers also need to be trained on having reasonable expectations regarding pace of play, perhaps by an organization such as the USGA, Southard said. For instance, he noted that in a survey Loveland conducted last year, 62 percent of respondents said they should never have to wait on a shot if the pace of play is pretty good.

But, as Southard points out, if golfers are riding in a cart at peak play times, “you’re going to wait (to hit shots into greens). The second part of a hole takes longer to play than the first. That you have to wait in the fairway doesn’t (necessarily) mean slow play. There’s an amount of wait time that’s acceptable.

“There’s a perception that any waiting is slow play. A lot of golfers are just unrealistic about pace of play.”

And, of course, what might be a good pace of play in the middle of a busy day wouldn’t be acceptable in the early morning. So it isn’t realistic — or make much sense — for a course to pin itself down to a certain expectation for length of rounds regardless of the time of day.

Southard became passionate about pace-of-play matters as a general manager and part-owner of a course in Michigan.

“Where I’m from, the season is very short, and you sweat it out in the winters when there’s no customers,” he said. “So you want to maximize the number of people on the course (during the playing season). That means you need to improve the flow of golfers (on the course). That’s kind of a win-win.”