With junior Joe Murdock and senior Cam David out of the picture at the Lansing Christian Invitational, freshman Nicholas Notarnicola picked up the slack for the boys varsity golf team by shooting a team-high 84 on 18 holes. This might sound like a pressure-inducing scenario to some people; however, Nicholas wasn’t fazed.

“Not having Joe on our team yesterday didn’t really put any pressure on me,” Nicholas confidently said. “I didn’t let that get to my head, which led to me playing a pretty decent round and not letting the thought of me having to step up get to me.”

Nicholas played well between holes one and six and got a few excellent lies off quality lay-ups. On hole six, though, he ran into some trouble when he hit the wrong club off the tee and ended up in the woods, which cost him a few valuable strokes. Those strokes came back to bite him; he ultimately never fully recovered to where he wanted to be at the end of the round. Nicholas ended his 18-hole round tied for 15th place with Chelsea’s Carter DeRosia, Grandville’s Luke Theeuwes, and the hometown golfer from Lansing Christian, Davis Garrett. 

Nicholas wasn’t the only golfer who had to embrace a new role on the team for this event, as junior Colten Jenkins, freshman Philip Murdock, and seniors Jeremy James and Josh Stevenson were all given the nod to move up in the starting lineup due to the absence of Joe and Cam. Head coach Paul TenEyck saw this round of golf as a “fun” one, and he was glad to provide players such as Colten with worthwhile varsity experience.

“It was good to give Nicholas and Philip a chance to move up on the line-up,” coach TenEyck said. “Jeremy did a nice job, and Colten picked up some great experience. It was a fun round.”

Trailing Nicholas, Philip scratched an 88 into his scorecard to clinch the 24th spot on the overall leaderboard. Although Philip struggled on the last set of holes, his efforts on his first four were still enough to spearhead FHC to tie for tenth place with Lansing Catholic.

“I had a really good stretch of four holes; I was playing well,” Philip said. “However, I blew up the last couple of holes because my irons didn’t stay consistent.”

Looking ahead, the boys have the next four days to rest until they swoop right back into action on Monday, May 24, for their last OK White Jamboree of the year. After the Jamboree on Monday, the Rangers will travel to play at Forest Akers Golf Course for their final regular-season event of the 2020-2021 season. Two days later, they will head five minutes over to Thornapple Pointe to compete in the coveted OK White Conference Tournament. It’s a chaotic schedule of golf from here on out for the golfers in green.