YANKTON -- The Mitchell girls' golf team had its best performance in years Friday at the Yankton Invitational at Fox Run Golf Course.
The Kernels finished in sixth place out of 14 teams, posting a 356. That was good enough to finish ahead of the likes of Rapid City Stevens, who the Kernels haven't beaten in years, two Sioux Falls schools and three Sioux City, Iowa schools.
"We were only four strokes out of fifth," said Mitchell coach Mark Horan, "so that was pretty exciting."
The Kernels were led by a breakout performance from eighth-grader Kristin Sabers, who finished in a tie for eighth place with an 83. Horan said she missed two putts that could have made her score even better.
"She was bombing the ball today," Horan said. "Everything looked really good, and she's really starting to look like the player I thought she was going to be for us."
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But the Kernels' strong score -- which was 40 strokes better than their best score last season -- wouldn't have been possible without strong efforts across the board. Last season, the Kernels had only seven individual scores below 100, but Friday in Yankton, all six Mitchell players carded a score below 100.
Perhaps the most impressive of those performances was that of Abby Bollinger, who missed the teams' triangular in Sioux Falls earlier this week with an ankle injury, but came back Friday to shoot an 89, her best career score in competition.
"That was her first time breaking 90, and she did it on a sore ankle," Horan said. "That was a gutty performance. She was solid, hitting a lot of greens and fairways, and she had a good short game."
Chelsea Boddicker was right behind Bollinger with a 90, Courtney Kirby shot a 94, Karlie McEntee shot a 98 and Kendra Cersosimo took about a dozen strokes off her previous best score this year to finish with a 99, the first time she's broken 100 in competition.
Sioux Falls O'Gorman's Molly Donohue won with a 75 when she beat Brookings' Morgan Fitts in a playoff. O'Gorman also won the team title with a 314, and was followed by Brookings (334), Yankton (345), Huron (347), Sioux Falls Washington (352) and Mitchell (356).
Mitchell will be action in Brookings on Monday. The start time for that meet has been moved up one hour to 1 p.m.
