| EMCC Lions claim second straight state runner-up golf finish in rain-shortened tournament |
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AMORY – With rain forcing cancellation of Tuesday’s final round of the MACJC State Golf Championship, the Lions of East Mississippi Community College posted their second straight state runner-up finish on the links. Monday’s 310 team score at River Birch Golf Club tied EMCC with Northwest Mississippi Community College for second place, 13 strokes behind three-time state champion Mississippi Gulf Coast CC.
EMCC’s tie for state runner-up golf honors comes on the heels of last year’s school-best, second-place finish claimed by head coach Dale Peay’s 2011 Lions at Deerfield Country Club in Canton. Monday in Amory, all five Lion golfers finished among the top 30 individuals. Leading the way were EMCC sophomores Weston Wallace and Tyler Slocum, who tied with three other golfers for seventh place with 3-over-par 75s. Freshman Miles Respess tied for 14th place with a 78, while sophomore Andrew Spiers and freshman Nick Davis rounded out East Mississippi’s scorecard in a five-way tie for 26th place with 82s. Finishing out the top five on the team leader board at this week’s state tournament were Copiah-Lincoln CC, which finished one stroke behind EMCC and Northwest at 311, and host Itawamba CC at 313. Mississippi Gulf Coast freshman Brad Thornton earned individual medalist honors with his 2-under-par 70 to finish two shots better than Chad Cupples of Northwest Mississippi CC. There was a three-way tie for third place (73) between MGCCC’s Jack Sargent, Branning Dykes of Jones County and Copiah-Lincoln’s Alex Clark. With their state runner-up finish, the EMCC Lions will make their third NJCAA Region 23 Golf Championship appearance in the past four years this coming Sunday and Monday (April 22-23) at Big Oaks Golf Course in Saltillo. The two-day event will also feature four-time defending region champion Mississippi Gulf Coast along with Northwest Mississippi, Copiah-Lincoln and region host Northeast Mississippi. Individually, EMCC’s Wallace earned MACJC All-State honors for the second year in a row by finishing sixth among the state’s junior college golfers with a 75.55 composite stroke average through this week’s state tournament. A year ago as a freshman, the former Northwest Rankin High School product claimed the prestigious Hubert Tucker Award for having the MACJC’s best scoring average during the 2011 spring season. This year’s MACJC All-State First Team was comprised of the MGCCC foursome of Thornton, Jared Smith, Jack Sargent and 2012 Hubert Tucker Award recipient Marcus Fox, along with Northwest Mississippi’s Cameron Thomas. Wallace was joined on the five-man MACJC All-State Second Team by Northwest’s Cupples and the Co-Lin trio of Clark, Hunter Hood and Keaton Stamps. |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 17 April 2012 ) |
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