Plainwell’s Tran returns to state finals for third consecutive year

It was one of those proverbial good news/bad news situations for the Plainwell girls’ golf team at a Division 3 regional competition at Marshall Country Club on Thursday, Oct. 6.
The bad news was the Trojans finished with a score of 424, which put them in sixth place and met they didn’t qualify for the state finals as team.
The good news? Senior Maddie Tran took medalist honors with an 89 and will represent Plainwell as an individual for the third consecutive year.
The top three teams advance to the state finals. Those teams were Stevensville-Lakeshore (405), Marshall (410) and Three Rivers (412).
Otsego matched Plainwell by shooting a 424, but was awarded fifth place on fifth-golfer scoring. Allegan was seventh, one stroke behind at 425.
Coming off a league season that saw them share the Wolverine Conference championship with Sturgis, the Trojans had high hopes heading into regional play.
“We came into the regional with a goal to place in the top three teams to qualify for state,” Plainwell coach Brian Anson said. “We’re disappointed we weren’t able to do that.”
Eight of the 11 teams in the regional were Wolverine Conference teams.
“Three quarters of the field was made up of Wolverine Conference teams we were familiar with,” Anson said. “We weren’t so familiar with Marshall, Harper Creek or Lakeshore but knew their team scoring was close to ours. 
“Overall team scoring for the field was so close that five or six teams had a good chance to place in the top three. We knew we had to be on our game.”
Unfortunately for the Trojans, that wasn’t the case.
“Golf is a game that can swing positive or negative on just a couple shots or a hole,” Anson said. “We just couldn’t get positive momentum going.  We didn’t seem to have those couple good shots or couple good holes that jumpstart a good round.”
Claire Awe was second in scoring for Plainwell at 103, followed by Alyssa Crill at 104 and Meagan MacGuire at 125.
“I think the team played hard but couldn’t get out of the slump,” Anson said. “It’s unfortunate it happened at a regional where I thought we had a very good chance to advance. It would have been a great experience for the team to go to state finals.”
Instead, Tran will head to the finals by herself.
“Even though Maddie had a less-than-normal round for her, she still kept everything together enough to be medalist and qualify for state,” Anson said. “I’m happy for her and hope she places in the top individuals again like she did last year.
“And I’m still proud of the accomplishments of this team. We may have missed state finals, but we were conference champions and that’s something the team should be proud of as well.”