Local Golf Report: Welcome to golf season 2016

The weather may not be picture perfect just yet. But make no mistake, spring has sprung, and that means golf is back.

Local courses in Havre, Chinook and all over the Hi-Line are now fully open for business, and given the warmer, albeit windy days, I’m guessing places like Prairie Farms Golf Course, Beaver Creek Golf Course and the Chinook Golf Club have already seen plenty of traffic.

And local courses are already seeing plenty of action due to Class B and C high school golf, and the Chinook golf teams are one of the teams thriving this spring.

Last Saturday, area prep golfers played at the Choteau Varsity Golf Meet in Choteau, where the Chinook boys scored a 406 to finish in fourth place. The Chinook girls didn’t notch a team score. Individually, Chinook senior Derek Bell placed sixth in the boys meet with an 83. Jake Norby shot an 89, Trevor Reid added a 113 and Tamer Jameison shot 121. The Beeter girls got a 107 by Ally Skoyen, a 134 from Ashley MacLeod and a 164 from Maloney Young. Players from Rocky Boy, Chinook and Harlem also played in a junior varsity meet Friday. The Beeters have three more meets this weekend, including one in Shelby and two in Fairfield.

Meanwhile, the Montana State University-Northern golf teams, under the direction of head coach Dave Boles, opened their spring season last week at the Lewis-Clark State Tournament in Lewiston, Idaho.

The Northern men placed sixth with a 1,219 with freshman Devin Bray leading the way with a 22nd place finish at 248. Kevin Tibbetts shot 303, Tyler Tharp posted 317 and Mason McDunn shot 351. In the women’s meet, the Skylights placed fifth with a score of 833. Ashley Hooper was Northern’s top finisher with a 198 in 22nd place. Diana Ball added a 206, while Whitney Bahrns shot 212, Kirsten Bense shot 217 and Carrigan Jones shot 237.

The Lights and Skylights will now prepare for the annual Frontier Conference Championships which will be held April 19-20 in Phoenix, Arizona.

And with those results, I’d like to personally say, welcome to another season of golf, and welcome to another sixth months of my weekly golf column. Here is where we will have all the golf news throughout the spring, summer and fall, and here is where we would like to publish interesting golf facts and stories from around our area, as well as all of your league results.

Once again, this column will run mostly on Tuesday’s throughout the golf season, so anyone wishing to have information published in that week’s column must have the information sent to me by the Sunday night before the column is published. Any information for this column can be emailed to me at [email protected] or [email protected].

And once again, welcome to another year of golf. The hibernation is over.