PRESQUE ISLE, Maine (WAGM) – The Presque Isle Wildcats and Fort Fairfield Tigers captured Conference Golf Championship and they head into the State Championships with confidence. Three Other schools also qualified for the States based on their performance at Regional Qualifiers. The Caribou Vikings placed third at the PVC Class B qualifier, Hodgdon lost out by one point for the Aroostook League Title, but they did snag a State berth and the Houlton Shiretowners placed second at the PVC Class C qualifier.

All three coaches say their teams are excited to compete at Natanis on Saturday.

“I am very excited about this one. Yes, I am young three freshman one senior and one junior starting. I have six freshmen overall. It’s going to be fun. The kids love golf and they live at the golf course all summer. All of these kids have come through our junior program. This past year we had 75 kids in that program,” said Dave Grant.

”Very excited about going to the States. The Regionals were a blast. We had a wonderful round. I had some players that surprised me and some younger players who came through in the Regionals,” said Sam Henderson, “We are looking forward to the States. It will be a really fun experience. The Regionals had almost 50 golfers. I am excited for Aroostook County with so many good golfers coming through.”

”We kind of know as a team that we can compete on any given day on any given course that we can compete with anybody out there. The kids have a lot of confidence in how they are playing right now which is a great feeling for the team,” said Nicholas Blais.

Houlton Sophomore Presley Goodwin will compete in the Girls Championship. She had to shoot 100 to meet the qualifying standard and she qualified on the number.

”I didn’t think it was going to happen at first. I had no idea I had to shoot a six on the last hole,” said Presley Goodwin, “I was really excited when I figured out I qualified. It is really exciting. I didn’t qualify last year I was pretty far off so I have come a long ways and I am really excited.”

Hodgdon and Caribou both qualified last year so they are somewhat familiar with the course.

“The boys know the course already. In fact they have gone down and played ahead of time earlier this summer. We are going to have a practice round on Friday so it should be really exciting at Arrowhead,” said Henderson.

”We are going to do a practice round down there tomorrow to try and give them a better feel. Most of the guys especially the couple of seniors that I have they have at least seen Tomahawk before. They actually have seen it a couple of different times. Some of them went down with their family earlier this summer just to try and prepare a little bit ahead of time. These kids take the game seriously and they want to do well,” said Blais.

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