A Big Day for Luke

The day started early for Luke, as he and his coach, Ryan Meserve, headed out to Natanis around 8 am. The golf wouldn't get underway until 10:00, but Luke wanted to play a few games of cribbage with Coach Meserve before making his way to hole number 11 for the first drive of the day.

Dennis and I stayed away until mid-afternoon. He was nervous; I was cautiously optimistic, but we both knew that Luke didn't want us anywhere near that course until he had sunk his final putt. Ryan kept us in the loop with frequent texts. Luke was three over par on his first nine holes, and that was a little hard to take, but we were ecstatic to learn that he birdied four in a row on his back nine to get to one under. He was able to hang on, parring the rest of his holes and finishing with a 71.

It took some time to ascertain whether or not that would be good enough, as final scores trickled in over the course of about 30 minutes. When the last Class B score was posted and there was no doubt that Luke was the winner, the smiles broke out. After coming in second last year and the year before, getting that 2013 State Schoolboy Champion trophy was sweet indeed.

Oh, Luke was featured in yesterday's Kennebec Journal, and stories about today's win should be in tomorrow's Journal and the Portland Press Herald.