Jim Meehan on golf: Appreciation for the Kalispel Championships, academics and a scoring app

Washington’s high school golf season is deep into the back nine with district tournaments next on the tee followed by state.

It’s a good time to look back and ahead.

Maybe it’s the warm weather or the glorious northern lights, but we feel a few tips of the cap are in order.

One of the best events annually on the spring calendar unfolded Thursday at Kalispel Golf and Country Club. The Kalispel Championships features the finest players and teams in the region from all six classifications.

Kalispel course superintendent Jeff Gullickson hatched the idea for the unique tournament. Since the first year in 2019 when it was known as the Spokane Area High School Championships, it’s been a highly anticipated tournament that wraps up the regular season and helps participants fine-tune their games for the postseason.

The course welcomed 50 groups from 7:36 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. on the tee sheet. There were walking scorers with the leaders and trophies for the top individuals and teams.

“The Kalispel Tribe donates the tee times all day on one of the best courses to high school kids,” Gonzaga Prep boys coach Dennis Dougherty said. “They provide prizes and they’ve got an incredible starter on the course.

“It’s a pretty impressive deal all the way around. I don’t think there’s anything like it that I’ve ever seen.”

Mead swept individual honors with sophomore Ben Barrett firing a 3-under-par 69 and senior Brooke Bloom carding a 3-over 76.

The Lewis and Clark boys claimed the team title by two strokes over Gonzaga Prep and Cheney. Ridgeline rolled to the girls title by 16 shots over Pullman.

A second tip of the cap: Lewis and Clark junior Amanda Nguyen was the Greater Spokane League 4A/3A Player of the Year with an impressive 71.3 scoring average. That’s a full three strokes better than last year when she shared honors with Bloom.

Nguyen, who finished third after a three-way playoff for the State 4A title last May, excels on the course and in the classroom. She was one of three Tigers that missed the Kalispel Championships while taking Advanced Placement (AP) exams.

LC will be without Nguyen at the District 8 4A Tournament on Monday and Tuesday at Sun Willows in Pasco. She will be in Los Angeles at the Society for Science Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest precollege STEM competition.

Nguyen will be presenting her research on using artificial intelligence in echocardiograms to identify hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in student-athletes.

“This is a kid that is a rock star in everything she does,” Lewis and Clark coach Michelle Grafos said. “That’s the cool thing about high school sports. You have these stories of kids and the successes they have on and off the course.”

It came as no surprise when Grafos mentioned the Tigers have been named academic state champions.

Lewis and Clark, Gonzaga Prep and Mid-Columbia Conference counterparts will battle at districts for two team berths in the state tournament, which will be held at the Creek at Qualchan.

“We’ve been watching (MCC) scores and we’ve been calculating our totals without Amanda the whole season,” Grafos said. “I still think we can go (to state). It’s a tall task, but we have a chance.”

Finally, consider it a sign of the times that players apparently will enter scores at district and state tournaments via an app on their cellphones. That was also the case at a few regular-season tournaments.

The longest-tenured GSL coaches had mixed reactions to the system.

“For a guy like me, this is hard,” said Dougherty, noting he started coaching in 1994. “A little bit of a brave new world.”

Players, of course, will figure it out in a nanosecond.

There are several obvious plusses and minuses. Players and coaches will have immediate access to individual and team leaderboards with real-time updates. Parents and grandparents unable to attend can keep track on their phones.

“We used it at our first tournament in the Tri-Cities,” Mead boys coach Keith Ross said. “I noticed a lot of kids punching in their scores and some of them are looking at the leaderboard. As a coach, as long as kids aren’t distracted on the course, I like to know where the kids stand and can coach according to that.”

“I’m not a fan,” Grafos said. “I think kids need to be off their phones. I love online scoring, but I just think we can do it without kids having a cellphone out.”

Players are only supposed to have their phones out from the end of a hole until the next tee box.

“The Pasco Invite did a good job giving us a preview,” Dougherty said. “They had it on the screens in the pro shop, running totals and standings. It was pretty slick for grandma and grandpa living in Florida that want to follow along.

“I don’t know how slick it’ll be when there’s a cheating accusation. I’ve been part of a lot of those over the years, working with kids on getting their scorecards right.”

Sure hope the players’ cellphone batteries are better than mine to punch in their scores over 4½ hours.