St Charles East comes back to to take conference

Updated: September 29, 2011 6:52PM

After dropping two of its six dual meet matches during the regular season, St. Charles East’s boys golf team knew what it had to do going into Thursday’s Upstate Eight River tournament at St. Andrews.

The odds were stacked up against them, but the Saints came through and won the tournament with a 309, stunning the field by roaring back to win the season title.

The 309 was tied with upstart Batavia, but the tie was broken in East’s favor on the fifth scorecard. Geneva, who was 6-0 in the regular season, shot a 315 to wind up second behind the Saints in the season standings.

“We squeaked by Geneva, which is rather remarkable given that they we’ve been head-to-head three or four times and they’ve been ahead of us, but we haven’t been that far behind,” St. Charles East coach John Stock said. “It’s a crazy game. We were very solid. We’ve been looking for that to happen this season. It hadn’t happened yet, and it happened today.”

The Saints used their youth at the bottom of the lineup to come up and bite the Vikings. Sophomores Kyle Jacobs (76 from the No. 7 spot) and Brad Riva (77 from the No. 6 spot) had East’s two best scores of the day. Sean Lenchner and Brian Danosky shot 78s for the Saints.

“It feels good to win it,” Jacobs said. “I don’t think many people thought we would. I knew we could do it. I know all of our guys can shoot that. It feels good that all of our guys could come through at one meet to win.”

Geneva was forced into a position similar to the Boston Red Sox rooting for the New York Yankees to win Wednesday. The Vikings needed archrival Batavia to beat St. Charles East to give Geneva the season title, but it was not meant to be.

“I became a Bulldog fan today when they started posting the scores,” Geneva coach Bill Koehn said. “One stroke and the Vikings come home with a trophy. East is coming together at the right time. We’ve been kind of slipping the other way.”

Ted Cuscaden came through with a 75 from the No. 7 spot to lead Geneva. Bill Gregory added a 79.

Batavia was solid and consistent, with Nathan Podraza, Matt Milauskas and Emilio Tenuta all posting 77s and Danny Ritchason adding a 78.

“The bottom of our lineup stepped up,” Batavia coach Tim DeBruycker said. “I talked all long that I thought we were a deep team. Now, my biggest trouble is figuring out who to play at regionals.”

Lost in the mix was St. Charles North, who was 5-1 in the regular season. The North Stars posted a 322 to finish fourth Thursday, taking them out of the title discussion.

The bright spot for North was Raghav Cherala. He shot a 76 to put the finishing touches on player of the year honors in the division.

“I actually had no clue the entire way,” Cherala said. “I didn’t even think about the all-conference thing until the end. It’s been a good season so far.”

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