By Chris Cox
Bishop Carroll has always had great teams in their athletic department and golf coach Mark Berger says this year has been one of his better boys’ golf teams in recent memory.
“It’s been a really good season for us so far,” he says. “We won the league title for the first time in 16 years and just the third time ever. That was a big accomplishment for us. We also shot our second-best score in recorded history and hosted a 5A regional with the top five teams in the state.”
One thing that has made this year special for Berger and the Golden Eagles is the fact they were able to knock off a formidable opponent.
“Our archrival is Kapaun Mount Carmel and they had won 15 straight league titles until we beat them this year,” Berger says. “They’ve also won a bunch of state titles so winning the league title felt like winning a state title because they are one of the top teams, if not the top team, in the state.”
Leading the way for the Golden Eagles this year was junior Noah Holtzman.
“Out of the seven tournaments we played before the postseason tournaments, he won five of them which is awesome,” Berger says. “His scoring average was between 72 and 72.5, so he was just a little bit over par. By my records that’s the best season scoring average we’ve had in our history.”
But it was not just Holtzman that made this year’s Carroll squad great.
“Our second-best golfer was junior Colby Hays. He’s about five over par and had several good rounds as well,” says Berger. “We had two other golfers averaging in the 70s in junior Pearce Lashley and senior Jack Stuckey. We also had a couple of others that filled in when they needed to or stepped up when the others didn’t have great days. But those four really carried the bulk of the load.”
With this year being the success it was for Bishop Carroll, Berger says he is excited to continue building next year.
“We have a lot of young guys back next year and a hopefully we’ll have some good freshmen come in as well,” he says. “Every year we want to compete like this. We want to keep it going so when these juniors graduate after next year we can keep it rolling.”
