For the second year in a row, the boys won the State Championship, edging out the rest of the field by eight strokes May 14-15 at Legacy Hills Golf Course. Junior Matthew Denton shot the second lowest individual score in the tournament, winning a playoff against a Plano High School golfer with an eagle on the second hole.

The regular season can be a grueling and tedious process, especially for a decorated team like boys varsity golf. With ambitions high, going through the regular season wasn’t the height of their competition. Head coach Callan Nokes knew what the expectation was going into the school year, but he wasn’t sure who would step up to the task.

“At the start of the year we look at the current personnel and what their ceiling is,” Nokes said. “I think, ‘How good can they be and how good can we be as a team?’ And after a lot of practice and hard work, I started feeling like this team could win State.”

The Chaps spent much of their practice time at Legacy Hills, studying the course in preparation for State.

“We did a lot of homework so that we knew the course better than everyone else,” Nokes said. “We always want to be more prepared than the rest.”

No team, aside from Westlake, finished under par. The same happened at Regionals, and overall, the Chaps haven’t had many close margins of victory.

“It really hasn’t been close for us,” Nokes said. “Close is where it’s coming down to the last hole. When my last guy finished the 16th hole, I knew we had it won. It’s nice when you already feel like it’s over.”

What’s next for the players is an offseason of individual play, where they compete to win tournaments. Summer golf helps them stay in peak condition.

“They go into a summer phase where they play individual tournaments,” Nokes said. “It absolutely helps them. Continuing to improve on their game through competition is always a good thing. When school starts back up, the team starts back up, and they start qualifying immediately to earn positions on the team.”

Now at the end of the road, Nokes reflected on the process of the season and how the team improved.

“The process was very rewarding,” Nokes said. “We continued to get better as the year went on. The scores we shot at Regionals were phenomenal. We’ve been blowing away the field. We were happy with the whole year.”