A career best for Agnes Irwin's Lees; Notre Dame keeps rolling

   There was quite a bit going on on the Inter-Ac League girls scene Monday.

   Kaitlyn Lees, the outstanding freshman at Agnes Irwin, posted a career-best for nine holes, carding a 34 at Sunnybrook Golf Club to lead the Owls to a 275-301 victory over host Chestnut Hill Springside Academy.

   Lees won the Inter-Ac title as a seventh-grader two years ago and was the runnerup last year and her game continues to make big strides.

   Sunnybrook was the site of the 1978 U.S. Women’s Amateur, the last women’s amateur won by a Canadian, Cathy Sherk. It was also the amateur swan song for Hall of Famer Beth Daniel, who was denied a third U.S. Amateur title. I happened to be covering that Women’s Amateur as a fledgling sports reporter for another news organization. My memory is that Daniel fell in the semifinals under somewhat controversial circumstances involving a ground-under-repair ruling that did not go her way.

   Meanwhile, at Overbrook Golf Club Monday, Mary Jane Wetzel’s Notre Dame golf team continued to roll along.

   The Irish actually got a little bit of a challenge from Episcopal Academy, but with sophomore Meghan Fahey leading the way with a 5-over 40 on her home course, Notre Dame claimed a 218-243 victory. The result of that match should have been included in the high school roundup in the Daily Times print edition Tuesday as it appears Wetzel called it in, as she always does, but the result did not appear in the paper. It’s not the first result to fall through the cracks on a busy day of high school spring sports.

   Junior Maddie Keane added a 43, junior Maggie Cass had a 44, freshman Olivia Traynor had a 45 and sophomore Bridget Pyott had a 46.

   Notre Dame improved to 4-0 while winning their 44^th straight Inter-Ac League match. The Irish are six-time defending Inter-Ac League champions, including unbeaten runs through the league the last five seasons.

   Maddie Bacskai, an All-Delco field hockey player and the sister of Malvern Prep standout golfer Brendan, led the way for Episcopal with a 44.

Bullock takes fourth at Iron Valley

   The Philadelphia PGA Junior Tour made a stop in the Lebanon area Sunday at Iron Valley Golf Club, a Pete Dye design that opened in 2000.

   Radnor freshman Daniel Bullock carded an 85 over the 6,408-yard, par-72 Iron Valley layout to finish fourth in the 16-to-18 division. Adam Lowe of Telford took division honors with a 79.

   Chase Miller of Bernville led the way in the 13-to-15 division with the day’s best score, a 4-over 76. Aronimink Golf Club’s Billy Civitella finished fourth with an 89 and Johnny Hally of Havertown placed ninth with a 94.

   Caitlin Bullock, a junior at Radnor, was third in the girls 16-to-18 division with a 119. Olivia Raihl of Wernersville won the division with a 95.

   Casey Oppenheimer of Conshohocken topped the 13-to-15 division with a 93. Runnerup Grace Hickey posted a 100, a round that included a wedge shot at the 94-yard fifth hole that found the bottom of the cup for her first career hole-in-one.

   Ryan D’Ariano of West Chester bested the nine-holers with a 38. Michael Block of Villanova finished in a tie for 11^th with a 58.

Purdue close to home

   

   Aurora Kan, the 2010 PIAA champion at Chichester, and the rest of the Purdue Boilermakers, coming off a third-place finish in the Big Ten Tournament, don’t have far to travel for the NCAA Regionals as they’ll tee it up in the South Bend Regional next week.

   Kan, a senior, was joined on the All-Big Ten second team by teammates August Kim, a sophomore from Florida,  and Marta Martin, a freshman from Spain.  It was the third time in her four years at Purdue that Kan has appeared on one of the All-Big Ten teams.

   The regional will be played at the Warren Golf Course on the Notre Dame campus. Arizona is the top-seeded team at the regional with two ACC powers, Duke and Wake Forest, seeded second and fourth, respectively.

   Kan will likely cross paths with Wake Forest freshman Erica Herr, who, as a Council Rock North freshman in the fall of 2010, denied Kan a fourth straight District One title. Kan went on to win the big prize, the PIAA crown a few weeks later. Herr won the next two PIAA titles and nearly won a third as a senior in the fall of 2013 when a dramatic 25-foot eagle putt by Mount St. Joseph’s junior Isabella DiLisio found the hole to give her the title.

   I would argue that Herr, who is having a solid freshman season at Wake, is the top scholastic golfer in the relatively brief history of high school girls golf in Pennsylvania with Kan a close second.

   Kan and the Boilermakers are seeded ninth in the South Bend Regional. The top six teams and top three individuals who are not associated with the top six teams advance to the nationals.

   Once the swinging starts, the seeds won’t matter much, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Purdue outplays its seeding and is one of the six teams to advance to the nationals.