AD SPACE
New class system ok for Freeze
Freeze Golf Coach Jeff Westberg
The numbers are down, but expectations are probably higher than ever with the Northern Freeze Golf Program.
With the co-op between Tri County and MCC netting eight golfers on the boys’ squad this year, only three names appear on the girl’s team.
The high point, however, acccording to Coach Jeff Westberg, is the three class system that should allow small schools a better level of competition. The Freeze will play in the Class A level and compete with schools with similar sized enrollments. Other classes are AA and AAA.
“We won’t play against schools like Roseau, Westberg said. “Roseau has dominated the section under the old system where all schools competed at the same level.”
What this means for smaller enrollment schools like the Freeze is, more players will likely be getting into the section playoffs and have a better chance of qualifying for the State Tournament.
Since this is the first year under the three class system, Westberg said it will be interesting to see who the more dominant teams will be. He said he’s looking at Warren and BGMR to be strong, but all should be comptetitive.
“We probably won’t see the real low scores, but the competition should be more even,” Westberg said.
Westberg, who has coached off and on for about ten years, said the three classes are overdue.
“It would have been nice to have this system a number of years ago,” he mused. “It would have made things more interesting.”
He indicated that he had coached a number of pretty good high school golfers in the past, but they had a difficult time competing with the bigger schools. Under the current system, he said, a number of those kids would have probably done well at section and even done well at the state level.
He does have some high hopes for his golfers this year, even though participation is probably not where he would like it to be.
“We are competing with track and baseball and softball for (paticipants),” Westberg said. “And you certainly can’t blame kids for wanting to play those sports. It is just hard to do all of this in a small school.”
Nonetheless, Westberg pointed to returning senior Ashley Nelson who should be very competitive this year.
“Ashley was a state qualifier last year,” he said.
He also pointed to junior Kim Nyflot on the girls’ team and 8th grader Tanner Knutson for the boys. But all of the kids should do well he said.
Rounding out the girls’ team is 7th grader Alex Krohn. For the boys there are also juniors Scot Amb, Spenser Knutson and Jake Beito, sophomore Chris Kiviaho, 8th grader Spencer Kuznia and 7th grader Aaron Wikstrom.
Warning: extract() [function.extract]: First argument should be an array in /usr/local/www/data/newpage1/static/nsnews/right.html on line 14
New class system ok for Freeze
The numbers are down, but expectations are probably higher than ever with the Northern Freeze Golf Program.
With the co-op between Tri County and MCC netting eight golfers on the boys’ squad this year, only three names appear on the girl’s team.
The high point, however, acccording to Coach Jeff Westberg, is the three class system that should allow small schools a better level of competition. The Freeze will play in the Class A level and compete with schools with similar sized enrollments. Other classes are AA and AAA.
“We won’t play against schools like Roseau, Westberg said. “Roseau has dominated the section under the old system where all schools competed at the same level.”
What this means for smaller enrollment schools like the Freeze is, more players will likely be getting into the section playoffs and have a better chance of qualifying for the State Tournament.
Since this is the first year under the three class system, Westberg said it will be interesting to see who the more dominant teams will be. He said he’s looking at Warren and BGMR to be strong, but all should be comptetitive.
“We probably won’t see the real low scores, but the competition should be more even,” Westberg said.
Westberg, who has coached off and on for about ten years, said the three classes are overdue.
“It would have been nice to have this system a number of years ago,” he mused. “It would have made things more interesting.”
He indicated that he had coached a number of pretty good high school golfers in the past, but they had a difficult time competing with the bigger schools. Under the current system, he said, a number of those kids would have probably done well at section and even done well at the state level.
He does have some high hopes for his golfers this year, even though participation is probably not where he would like it to be.
“We are competing with track and baseball and softball for (paticipants),” Westberg said. “And you certainly can’t blame kids for wanting to play those sports. It is just hard to do all of this in a small school.”
Nonetheless, Westberg pointed to returning senior Ashley Nelson who should be very competitive this year.
“Ashley was a state qualifier last year,” he said.
He also pointed to junior Kim Nyflot on the girls’ team and 8th grader Tanner Knutson for the boys. But all of the kids should do well he said.
Rounding out the girls’ team is 7th grader Alex Krohn. For the boys there are also juniors Scot Amb, Spenser Knutson and Jake Beito, sophomore Chris Kiviaho, 8th grader Spencer Kuznia and 7th grader Aaron Wikstrom.