Blazers keep their game up to par

In the second match of the season, Blair's golf team ranked second of four teams. Blair outshot Kennedy and Springbrook, but couldn't match the undefeated Sherwood at Laytonsville Golf Course.

The Blazer team, led by junior Ben Payes and sophomore Neal Vaselik, scored a respectable team average of 25.39 shots per hole. Although Blair outscored Springbrook by three strokes and Kennedy by five, Blair's score was four strokes too high to match Sherwood's 21.6. Sherwood now stands with a 6-0 record.

Blair junior Zachary Mellman, who was placed fourth in the standings, truly displayed his ability by earning the best overall score for Blair. Although he was not able to finish all eighteen holes due to darkness, Mellman scored an amazing sixty-nine strokes for the sixteen holes he played. By the twelfth hole, he had shot four birdies, one of which came off a forty-foot pitch-in on hole eleven.

Blair golf coach Jim Young was impressed with Mellman's performance and hopes that Mellman will be as consistent during the rest of the season as he was in this match. "I am very happy with the way that Zach played," said Young. "He played like the number one player on the team."

Conditions for the match were hardly ideal. The wind gusted on and off and, according to weather.com, winds at the Laytonsville golf course reached speeds of up to sixty miles per hour. In fact, junior Ben Martinez attributes his poor performance to the high wind speeds. "I would've done awesome if it hadn't been for the wind," Martinez exclaimed sarcastically. "I'd have shot well under par!"

Young agrees that the "weather conditions were very difficult."