State champion Kim finishes in a tie for seventh in PKBGT's Mid-Atlantic Girls Championship at Bulle Rock

    I sort of missed this last week, but as I was checking out the Duke women’s golf website for some intel on the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship, it referenced that one of its recruits, Tower Hill senior and Avondale resident Rylie Heflin, had teed it up in the Mid-Atlantic Girls Championship, a stop on the Peggy Kirk Bell Girls Tour (PKBGT). And there were just too many local names to let it slide. It led me to another PKBGT stop the weekend before Easter, the Spring Bell Invitational, so let’s just call it a little PKBGT roundup.

   West Chester East junior Victoria Kim, who captured the PIAA Class AAA Championship last fall at the Heritage Hills  Golf Resort in York County, finished in a tie for seventh place with Sarah Lydic of Ocean View, Del. in last weekend’s Mid-Atlantic Girls Championship, a stop on the Peggy Kirk Bell Girls Tour (PKBGT) that wrapped up Sunday at Bulle Rock Golf Club in Havre de Grace, Del.

   After matching par in the opening round with 72 over the 5,800-yard, par-72 Bulle Rock layout, Kim fell back with a 4-over 76 to finish with a 4-over 148 total. Lydic, the younger of Ocean View’s Team Lydic pair, was the opposite, opening with a 76 and then matching par in Sunday’s final round with a 72 to catch Kim at 4-over. Lydic is a Class of ’24 competitor. Pretty sure she’s at Sussex Academy, assuming she followed older sister Hannah there.

   The title went to Maria Atwood of Holly Springs, N.C., who opened with a sparkling 2-under 70 before matching par in Sunday’s final round with a 72 that gave her a 2-under 142 total and a three-shot victory over Irene Kim, a precocious Class of 2026 entry from Woodstock, Md., and Kiera Bartholomew of Wake Forest, N.C.

   Atwood, the 2018 Carolina Junior Girls’ Championship winner and a Class of ’22 competitor, offset three bogeys with five birdies in her strong opening round.

   Irene Kim had opened with a 77, but came back with a scintillating 4-under 68 over the Pete Dye design at Bulle Rock, which hosted the LPGA Championship from 2005 to 2008 after it left its association with McDonald’s and DuPont Country Club behind, to finish in a tie for second place, three shots behind Atwood.

   Bartholomew, a sophomore at North Raleigh Christian Academy, was named the 2020 North Carolina Junior Player of the Year after moving to Wake Forest from New Jersey. Pretty sure she used to represent Indian Valley Country Club in Telford when she competed in Pennsylvania junior events. Bartholomew added a solid 1-under 71 to her opening-round 74 to get her piece of second place along with Irene Kim.

   Lisa Lapeyre, a Class of ’22 competitor from New Orleans, Alina Ho, a Class of ’24 entry from Great Falls, Va., and Olivia Cong, another Class of ’24 competitor from Germantown, Md., shared fourth place, each landing on 2-over 146, a shot behind Kim and Bartholomew. Lapeyre carded a pair of 1-over 73s while Ho and Cong had identical splits, each opening with a 1-under 71 before adding a 75.

   West Chester East’s Kim, who won a playoff over Michelle Cox of Emmaus to capture the state title last fall a year after falling in a three-way playoff with the state crown on the line, and Sarah Lydic were another two shots behind that trio in the tie for seventh place.

   Tower Hill’s Heflin, whom I mentioned in the intro to this post will be joining the program at ACC power Duke this summer, bounced back from an opening-round 77 with a 1-over 73 to finish in a tie for 10^th place at 6-over 150. It seems like a while ago, but Heflin claimed the Pennsylvania Junior Girls’ Championship in 2017 and always seems to contend for that crown each summer.

   Unionville sophomore Mary Grace Dunigan, who helped the Longhorns – yes, that nickname is new – capture the PIAA Class AAA team championship last fall at Heritage Hills, finished alone in 14^th place at 152 after adding a 75 to her opening-round 77.

   Baldwin sophomore Megan Adelman, Pennsbury senior Jade Gu, Avery McCrery, winner of the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Junior Girls’ Championship last summer at Sandy Run Country Club, and Sussex Academy junior Hannah Lydic of Team Lydic out of Ocean View, Del., finished in a tie for 15^th place, each landing on 9-over 153.

   Adelman added a 76 to her opening-round 77. Cruising around the Internet a little, it looks Adelman and her Inter-Ac League rivals are going to play their normal spring season after losing the 2020 season a year ago to the coronavirus pandemic.

   Gu, who capped her outstanding scholastic career by finishing in a tie for ninth place in the PIAA Class AAA Championship last fall, opened with a 2-over 74 before adding a 79. McCrery, a Class of ’26 entry, finished up with a solid 2-over 74 after opening with a 79. Hannah Lydic, like Gu, added a 79 to a solid opening-round 74 and finished five shots back of her little sister in the battle for low-Lydic honors.

   Haverford High senior Riley Quartermain, denied a chance to play in the PIAA postseason last fall because the Central League couldn’t put together a qualifier in time – lot of pandemic issues in that whole affair – finished in the group tied for 19^th place with a 155 total.

   It looks like Quartermain, a product of the Llanerch Country Club junior program, will follow the finest female player in Central League history, Radnor’s two-time PIAA Class AAA champion Brynn Walker, to North Carolina this summer. After opening with an 83 at Bulle Rock, Quartermain flashed her considerable potential by matching par with a 72.

   Episcopal Academy senior Lauren Jones finished a shot behind Quartermain in the group tied for 23^rd place with a 156 total. Jones, who teed it up in the 2019 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship at SentryWorld in Stevens Point, Wis., opened with a 3-over 75 before adding an 81.

   Jones and the Churchwomen will be seeking a third straight Inter-Ac title this spring after not being able to compete due to the pandemic a year ago.

   Rockwood senior Vileska Gelpi, the PIAA Class AA champion at Heritage Hills last fall, finished in 27^th place as she shaved six shots off her opening-round 82 with a final-round 76 for a 158 total.

   Carlisle sophomore Hannah Barrett, a PIAA Class AAA qualifier last fall, finished alone in 38^th place at 163 after adding an 82 to her opening-round 82. Owen J. Roberts sophomore Stefania Fedun, who shared 14^th place with Barrett in her first appearance at Heritage Hills last fall, finished among the trio tied for 40^th place at Bulle Rock, carding a pair of 83s for a 166 total.

   A couple of interesting names popped up in the Futures Division at Bulle Rock with Kayley Roberts, a Class of ’26 competitor from Phoenixville, finishing in a tie for 13^th place, and Jillian Burks, a Class of ’27 entry from Paoli, finishing alone in 16^th place.

   Roberts, who has been playing some solid golf on the Philadelphia Section PGA Junior Tour, added an 86 to her opening-round 81 for a 167 total over a Bulle Rock layout that measured 5,255 yards for the younger girls.

   Burks, coming off a nice fifth-place finish in the Girls 10-11 division in the Drive, Chip & Putt National Finals on Easter Sunday at Augusta National Golf Club – caught a glimpse of her on The Golf Channel coverage of the event – added an 85 to her opening-round 84 for a 169 total. Burks was still probably coming down from the high of competing at Augusta National, her appearance there delayed by a year because of the pandemic.

   Vidhi Lakhawala of Kendall Park, N.J. captured the top spot in the Futures Division as she defeated Vincenza Papa of Foster, R.I. on the second hole of a playoff after both landed on 1-under 141 for the regulation 36 holes. Both are Class of ’26 competitors.

   The Spring Bell Invitational, contested March 27 and 28 at the Boar’s Head Resort’s Birdwood Course, the Virginia women’s team’s home course in Charlottesville, Va., saw the return to action for Lower Merion sophomore Sydney Yermish, who finished in a tie for fourth place with Hannah Lydic with a 3-over 147 total.

   Yermish was unable to defend the District One Class AAA crown she won as a freshman in 2019 due to the Central League’s inability to get a district qualifier together in time. A point of pride at Rolling Green Golf Club, Yermish got one a nice run on the PKBGT in the late fall and early winter, picking up victories in the PKBGT Tournament of Champions at Forest Green Golf Club in Pinehurst, N.C. in early December and in the Kiawah Resort Girls Classic at Oak Point Golf Course on Johns Island, S.C. by eight shots in early January.

   If Yermish hadn’t played much competitive golf in a while, it didn’t show as she stormed out of the gate at Birdwood with birdies at the first, second and fourth holes and, after a bogey at the fifth, an eagle at the par-4 sixth hole on her way to a 4-under 32 on the outgoing nine.

   Yermish got on the bogey train a little on the back nine, but she did sneak in a second eagle at the par-5 12^th hole and a birdie at the finishing hole. It added up to a 2-under 70 over the 5,935-yard, par-72 Birdwood layout that gave her the lead after the opening round and tells me that Syd the Kid is sitting on a low round sometime soon.

   She cooled off with a 77 in the second round to share fourth place Hannah Lydic, who opened with a solid 1-undere 71 before adding a 76 in the second round, at 3-over.

   It was a spirited battle for low-Lydic honors at Birdwood as Sarah Lydic matched big sister’s opening round of 1-under 71 before adding a 78 that left her in a tie for 12^th place at 5-over 149, two shots behind her big sister.

   Atwood, the winner two weeks later at Bulle Rock, was the runnerup to Adrian Anderson of Murrells Inlet, S.C. at Birdwood.

   Anderson, a junior at St. James High, was the 2020 Carolinas Golf Association and South Carolina Junior Golf Association Player of the Year in 2020. She added a 1-under 71 to her opening-round 73 to capture the title with an even-par 144 total.

   Atwood matched par in the opening round with a 72 before adding a 1-over 73 that left her a shot behind Anderson at 1-over 145.

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