Morgan golf team set to host Thursday’s tournament

Published 7:09 pm Wednesday, April 5, 2017

The Morgan Academy golf team couldn’t be playing any better going into its only home tournament of the season Thursday at the Selma Country Club.

The Senators have won three consecutive tournaments and look poised to compete for the Alabama Independent School Association State Championship later this month, but on Thursday they’ll get a real test. Lee-Scott, the 2016 state champions, will be one of 16 schools in Selma Thursday for the largest AISA field of the year thus far.

“They’ve been practicing really hard. They are old enough now that they’ve got a little maturity on them and they know how important it is to play well at home,” said Morgan coach Ira Wagoner. “It’s supposed to be very windy tomorrow, 25 mile per hour winds, so even though we are playing at home, it’s still going to be really tough for our guys too, but they look forward to it.”

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After a rainy week, temperatures are supposed to be in the high 60s on Thursday.

This will be the first time Morgan has seen Lee-Scott at a tournament in a month, so it’ll be a good measuring stick for where those schools stack up, as well as the rest of the AISA. Last year, Lee-Scott won the AISA State Tournament by 86 shots and had the top two finishing teams in Morgan Academy’s Tournament.

The Senators finished fourth last year in their own tournament, but they’ve grown a lot since then.

The Senators are still young, with no seniors in their starting team five, but they are much more experienced than last year.

“I think they believe now they can beat anybody any day,” Wagoner said. “We’ve gotten over a lot of the inferior feelings we might’ve carried around for a couple of years, but they’ve got a lot of confidence.”

There are 88 players projected to play in Thursday’s tournament, which is taking place just two weeks before the state tournament at Saugahatchee Country Club on April 24-25.

Wagoner said it’s a great chance to see how his team looks this close to the state championship and to get a look at the competition, in particular Lee-Scott.

“We have improved by leaps and bounds. Now, they are still good and they would be the favorite, but our young guys have got a lot of confidence,” Wagoner said. “They’ve won three tournaments in a row, and they’ve posted some really good scores in some bad conditions, so we’re confident. We’re not scared of them.”