Earlier this week, Columbus North and Columbus East played on a different sectional golf course than the past seven years.
Saturday, they’ll play on a different regional course.
The Bull Dogs and Olympians will venture to Country Oaks in Montgomery for the first time to play in the Washington Regional. North and East had played in the Lapel Regional in Anderson the past few years.
“We just want to take the confidence we’ve had the last couple tournaments and apply that to Saturday,” North coach Scott Seavers said. “But we have to develop a game plan for that course.”
The Bull Dogs, who played a practice round at Country Oaks on Wednesday, are coming off rounds of 299 in their past two tournaments. They had the top five individuals in Monday’s Bloomington North Sectional at Cascades.
Top-ranked Evansville North will be the favorite on Saturday. The No. 7 Bull Dogs, along with No. 11 Castle, No. 17 Floyd Central and possibly Bedford North Lawrence and New Albany figure to also battle for the three state-qualifying spots.
“There are some good teams down there,” Seavers said. “There are probably six teams that have a chance to get out. We can’t have any letups. But I’m confidence that if we play like we’re capable of playing we have a chance to advance and play in the state finals. I told our girls I don’t know if we can beat Evansville North, but we’re sure going to try. We’re sure going to give it our best effort.”
Meanwhile, Columbus East also will be looking to crash the party. The Olympians, who finished third in the sectional, are making their 10th consecutive regional appearance.
“We were extremely proud of the girls,” first-year East coach Kylie Weichman said. “They have worked really hard this year. We set a goal of getting out of sectional. The sectional is a lot tougher.”
Former East AD passes
Dennis Sylvester, the first and longest-tenured athletics director in Columbus East history, died earlier this week at the age of 83.
Sylvester served as the Olympians athletics director for 25 years. During his tenure, he started the wrestling program, which in recent years, has risen to one of the state’s best.
East’s athletics complex is named after Sylvester.
Trinity names new AD
Ryan Cremeans, who had been the athletics director at White Creek Lutheran School, has been named the new athletics director at Trinity Lutheran.
The Adrian, Michigan, native played baseball at Central Michigan and professionally with the Mid-Missouri Mavericks. He attended graduate school in Chicago and worked in the insurance business the past 13 1/2 years.
Cremeans also will serve as director of outreach at Trinity.
IHSAA schedules draws
The IHSAA has scheduled tournament draws for its fall sports, and two of them will be coming up on Monday.
The boys tennis draw will be at 7 p.m. Monday, followed by the boys and girls soccer draws at 8 p.m. The volleyball draw will be at 8 p.m. Oct. 4, and the football draw is set for 6 p.m. Oct. 8.
All draws will be streamed on ihsaatv.org
Crusaders’ regional set
Columbus Christian will host the ICSAA South Region volleyball tournament on Oct. 3.
The Crusaders will play Christian Academy of Madison in the semfinals at 1 p.m., followed by Evansville Christian and Pleasant View Christian in the other semifinal at around 2:30 p.m. The third-place game will start around 4 p.m., with the championship to follow at around 5:30 p.m.
The winner advances to the ICSAA state final four, which will be Oct. 10 at Ivy Tech in Noblesville.
Ted Schultz is sports editor for The Republic. He can be reached at tschultz@therepublic.com or 812-379-5628.
