Heckel, Lingen extend season by at least another week

WIAA DIV. 2 GOLF

The Medford golf team’s strong seasonending surge wasn’t quite enough to get the team to next week’s WIAA Division 2 sectional meet, but it was enough to get two of the Raiders there.

Junior Caleb Heckel and freshman Connor Lingen carded scores of 85 and 86 respectively at Tuesday’s WIAA Division 2 Northwestern regional to get two of the four individual berths to the June 8 sectional meet at Black River Falls’ Skyline Golf Course. As a team, the Raiders finished fifth out of nine teams Tuesday, one spot and 10 strokes behind fourth-place Spooner, who did get the last team berth in the sectional. “We’ve been at sectionals quite a few years in a row and I wasn’t sure if we’d get somebody through,” head coach Dave Vaara said. “I figured the magic number was 85 and they got it. Connor slipped in with an 86. That was pretty good. I was so happy. It was a really good moment.” As expected, Lakeland rolled to the regional championship with a team score of 302. Northwestern (331) and Rice Lake (335) also earned sectional spots with their play at Hidden Greens North in Solon Springs. Vaara said he pegged Medford’s chances of getting the team through at about 20% based on the team’s seventh seed going in.

“But we play tougher courses and traditionally we’ve gotten better at the end of the year,” he said. “That’s been the case the last 20 years. So I thought we had a shot.”

Medford played the course for the second time in less than two weeks and was four shots away from tying its season-best score of 348 recorded there at the May 20 Northwestern Invitational. “It’s kind of short,” Vaara said of Hidden Greens North. “There are a lot of open areas, but there’s a lot of oak trees you can hit. You have to play a lot of target golf. You can’t just smash it all over the place. There’s some really thick scrub oak and stuff in spots. So you gotta know where you’re hitting the ball. We had good notes. That helped a lot.”

Heckel was part of a three-way tie for 12th overall out of 45 golfers with his 13-over-par round. Ten of the top 11 golfers were part