Overbrook finally on top again in GAP Team Match

   Overbrook Golf Club’s stirring victory in the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Team Match playoffs Saturday is covered in detail in Marty Emeno’s excellent story on the GAP website.

   I have to admit I was surprised that Overbrook hadn’t won the top class of the GAP team competition since 1988. Overbrook just has that many good players.

   But Emeno’s story made the point that a core of the old guard – team captain Oscar Mestre, Chris Lange, Frank McFadden and brothers Andy and Ray Thompson were on that championship team 26 years ago – were joined by a group of young guns to bring the title back to Sproul Road. And the youngsters wanted it badly for the Overbrook vets.

   Players like the Kania brothers, James Jr. and Michael, Sean Fahey, Chris Lange’s son, Chris Lange Jr., and McFadden’s son Brad are better golfers for having grown up trying to compete against the “old guys.”

   Fahey, coming off a solid freshman season at Dartmouth, needed trains and automobiles to make the trek from Hanover, N.H. to tee it up for Overbrook. He was part of a formidable trio that represented Overbrook at Aronimink Golf Club that included Michael Kania, a two-time Haverford School All-Delco a year removed from an outstanding career at Villanova, and Greg Jarmas, a PIAA runnerup as a senior at Lower Merion in 2009 who just wrapped up an outstanding career at Princeton with a tie for ninth place at the Ivy League Tournament.

   There were two weather delays at Aronimink, so Fahey’s par on the final hole earned him two points in his match with Little Mill Golf Club’s Matt Gaffney and put Overbrook over the top. Overbrook totaled 69 points, defending champion Philadelphia Cricket Club was second with 64 points, Little Mill was third with 60 and Aronimink was fourth with 23.

   Ironically, it was an Inter-Ac League rival of Fahey’s, reigning Daily Times Player of the Year Cole Berman, a Georgetown commit, who sealed the win for the Cricket Club a year ago in a similar scenario when weather delays made his match at Little Mill the one that decided the outcome.

   James Kania Jr., whose father was a key member of Overbrook’s 1988 champions, was in the Overbrook contingent at the Cricket Club and swept all nine of the possible points he could. Like younger brother Michael, James, the 2005-06 Daily Times Player of the Year, was a two-time Inter-Ac League champion at Haverford School.