Wellington girls golf team heads to state after winning Ulysses Regional
Wellington wins the Ulysses Regional Girls Golf Championship.
Sumner Newscow report — The Wellington girls’ golf team took a huge trip to Ulysses and came home Class 4A Regional Champions.
The Crusaders scored a 370 team score, 17 strokes over second-place Pratt, which shot a 387. Andale placed third at 418 to qualify for state. Other team scores were: Hugoton 422, Rose Hill 432, Ulysses 436, and Mulvane 456. The full results can be found here.
Presley Cornejo
Individually, Wellington had four of the top 10 regional scores and nearly had a fifth as freshman Bella Angleton finished 11th.
Presley Cornejo finished third with an 89. Claire Ginter placed fourth at 90, Taryn Viramontes shot 95 for seventh place, and Haley Gulick shot 96 for eighth. Angleton’s 101 was good enough for 11th. Kenna Maxwell placed 27th with a 115. Cornejo was leading for most of the tournament before Lexi Blasi of Pratt overtook her down the stretch to shoot an 85. Ulysses’ Hanna Wolf placed second with an 86.
Taryn Viramontes had a rough tournament, getting off to a slow start. But she did rally down the stretch to finish seventh. Gulick, who hasn’t played golf since middle school, has been playing her best golf of the season, securing the team’s fourth score. Wellington would have had to play really badly to not make the state tournament. It was 52 strokes as a team in front of Hugoton.
“It was not our best day, but we persevered,” said Vanessa Sawyer, co-head golf coach. “We had a bit off and had some bad holes. But we played good enough to win.”
Wellington now sets its sights on the Class 4A state tournament next week at the Hesston Golf Course on Monday. This is a two-day tournament with the top six of 12 teams qualifying for the next day. Last year, Wellington finished third at State.
Wellington got a break by going to Ulysses. For example, the McPherson regional was loaded—so much so that last year’s state runner-up, Wamego, was knocked out in that tournament. Both McPherson and Topeka Hayden shot 326, and Buhler shot 341 to edge out Wamego, which had a 345.
Baldwin won the Fort Scott Regional with a 385 score. Bishop Meige and Eudora also qualified. In the Coffeyville Regional, Chanute shot a 377 to win. Augusta and Winfield qualified.
“The state tournament is going to be wide open,” Sawyer said. “We beat both Buhler and McPherson in the (Ark Valley Chisholm Trail League Div. 3 & 4 tournament). I think anything could happen next week.”
This marks the second out of three years that Wellington has won Regional. After winning it in 2022, the Crusaders lost by one stroke to Winfield in 2023. The Crusaders have qualified as a team for the third straight year.
