Thursday, Oct. 09, 2008

Crusaders claim Class AA regional title

East also advances its entire team

BELLEVILLE -- The Althoff Crusaders continued to make Clinton Hill Golf Course their home away from home Wednesday at the Class AA Belleville Girls Golf Regional.

Junior Abbey Woods shot an 89 while four Crusaders teammates added rounds of 99 or better as Althoff claimed its first regional golf title with a seven-stroke win over host East.

Sophomore Riley Keltner added a 93 while Ashley Von Alst added a 95 and Kelsi Wuller chipped in with a 97 for Althoff, which finished with a team score of 374.

Belleville East, getting a heroic effort from individual medalist Kristi Tschudin, who shot an 80, was at 381,while Quincy was third at 385.

The win was a special one for Crusaders coach Tim Gehrs who has watched his young squad develop into one of the best in southern Illinois in less than a year.

"It's been a season of a lot of firsts for us. The first time we had beaten Edwardsville, the first time we had won the city title and the first time we had won the Edwardsville Tournament. Winning a regional title means a lot to these girls and to us because of the work they have put in," Gehrs said. "We don't have a player who is going to shoot scores in the 70's, but we do have five players who can shoot in the 80's or 90's and that was the difference today. We won as we have all year, as a team."

The win moves Althoff, along with Belleville East and Quincy, into the Mascoutah Sectional at Roland Barkau Golf Course in Okawville on Monday.

Several other local individuals also earned sectional bids with rounds of 103 or better including Katie Milleville of O'Fallon (90), Callie Settles (92), Amy Faus (99) and Catherine Hawn (103) of Waterloo, Alyssa Miller (94) of Collinsville, Emma Moore (98) of Alton (98), Ashley Elder (99) and Rachel Tribout (101) of Belleville West and Brittany Domagalski (103) of Granite City.

While Althoff won the team title, the Crusaders had to share the spotlight Wednesday with Tschudin. The Southwestern Conference champion and one of the top players in the metro east during the regular season, Tschudin suffered an injury to the muscles in her neck and was not in school on Tuesday as she could not turn her neck.

Still in obvious pain on Wednesday she managed to shoot an 80 to earn medalist honors.

"I'm taking medication for it but I can only take it once every eight hours. As far as the pain goes right now on a scale of 1-10, it's probably an 8," Tschudin said, holding back the tears. "The doctor said it was up to me if I wanted to try it. I've had too good of a season to end it like that. I wanted to make it to the sectional and now that I have I've got a few more days to see if it gets better."

Caitlin Combs added an 88 for East, which also had rounds of 104 from Kayla McClain and 109 from Katie Schickedanz.

Contact reporter Dean Criddle at 239-2665 or dcriddle@bnd.com.