Aspen junior Lenna Persson jokes with her team after a drive in Friday’s practice. Persson’s third straight individual regional title this week helped advance the Skiers to the 3A state championship in Loveland on Monday and Tuesday.
It’ll be a bright and early Sunday morning for the Aspen High School girls’ golf team, but it’s all for a good reason.
The Skiers will load up at 7 a.m. and head to Loveland before getting in a practice round at The Olde Course ahead of Monday and Tuesday’s 3A state championship, seeking the first girls’ golf title in program history after a dominant regional title win this week.
“I’m so proud of everyone. Everyone’s made such great improvements,” junior Lenna Persson said. “I feel really confident in all of our games and I’m just really proud of the work that all of us have made and put in this season.”
Aspen will send a quartet of senior Brooke O’Sullivan and juniors Madison Nelson, Persson and Audrey Woodrow to compete — the same group who tied for second in state last year at the Aspen Golf Club.
Persson is the leader of the group as the No. 5 ranked golfer in all of 3A after a dominant performance in her third straight individual regional title — besting the field by 11 strokes to be the only competitor to shoot under par with a career-best 71. She won two tournaments and placed top three in two others during the regular season.
She’s confident in her game heading into state competition after a lot of work on putting.
“I was playing good in the beginning of the season and then I had a little bit of a rough patch and that’s because I couldn’t putt to save my life,” Persson said. “Then that’s all I worked on … just putting, putting, putting. So I feel good and confident with the rest of my game … but once I really dialed in on my short game, it made all the difference.”
O’Sullivan enters the state tournament ranked No. 8 in 3A — using all her rounds competed; she’s ranked No. 10 using her top-six rounds — making Aspen just one of two teams in 3A with two reps in the top 10. She won her senior day tournament on April 16 at Aspen Glen Club, breaking into the 70s for the first time in her high school career.
The pair give Aspen two of the top-end golfers in the competition — Persson finished fourth and O’Sullivan finished sixth in the state tournament last season — but the team’s depth is a key to making it a contender.
Aspen junior Audrey Woodrow hits from the fairway in Friday’s practice at Aspen Golf Club. Woodrow will compete in her third state championship next week.
Woodrow will be competing in her third state tournament — she and Persson qualified individually in their freshman season in 2022. She’s ranked No. 40 in 3A and has shot as low as 83 this season, keeping her score under 101 strokes in all six of her competitions.
“I’ve definitely had some ups and downs … but I’m just working on being more consistent. I think my strength is course management,” Woodrow said. “The pressure was a bit more last year because it was a bit more on me to bring in the third score, which was kind of scary. But now we’ve all kind of grown as players and Madison and I both improved so much this year. That’s just alleviated a lot of the pressure because there’s two of us now.”
And at the regional, that showed. Woodrow shot a 98 but didn’t factor into the team’s scoring. Nelson — ranked No. 102 in 3A — stepped up and shot a tied-for-season-best 96. Nelson did so even after being sick before the competition, Persson said.
It puts Aspen right up there with the rest of the classification in the rankings. When using a team’s best six rounds, Aspen is ranked No. 3 in 3A — though they drop to No. 8 when using all rounds, which is partially skewed by the participation of other players in the Skiers’ program.
“Collectively, we have four players that have the potential to be under 100, which a lot of teams don’t have,” Persson said. “We also have two players that have the potential to shoot in the 70s, which most teams don’t have either.”
No. 1 Prospect Ridge boasts three players ranked in the top 18, led by No. 2 Hope Torres. Team No. 2 Colorado Academy is the other 3A squad with two golfers in the top 10: No. 7 Avery Lent and No. 9 Jordan Slutzky. CA also has senior Avery Bakes slotted at No. 19 in the rankings.
Aspen junior Madison Nelson hits an iron in Friday's practice, the last one at the home base of Aspen Golf Club before heading to Loveland for the state championship. Nelson tied her season best score at regionals to help Aspen High clinch the regional title.
Aspen was scheduled to play a tournament round at The Olde Course in the Loveland Invite on April 10, but the team did not go. Persson, however, said that the practice round on Sunday will be sufficient to prepare for competition starting on Monday.
The tournament is scored by stroke count of 36 holes of golf across two days. The top three scorers on each team are counted toward the team’s overall score.
Aspen tees off at 9:35 a.m. on Monday.
“I think we’ve all prepared for this. We’ve been preparing since last season,” Woodrow said. “And I think we’re ready to kick some butt in Loveland, Colorado.”