For the last two years, The Dalles High Riverhawks have had one of the best boys golf squads at the Class 4A level. The Riverhawks took eighth place in the 2022 state tournament, followed by a fourth-place finish last year.
However, the three top golfers (Joe Codding, Kenneth Miller, Keeler Lawson) who helped lead that success graduated last year. Coach Dan Telles will have somewhat of a rebuilding year on his hands while guiding a group of players who are much younger and less experienced. Telles, in his 20th season, has nine golfers who started practicing Feb. 26 at The Dalles Country Club — four of them are first-year players.
“It’s going to be a rebuilding year, so things are going to be really challenging for us, but that’s okay,” said Telles. “The three seniors that we lost to graduation were pretty good players and they were capable of shooting scores in the 70s and 80s. We do have some pretty solid guys returning from last season with senior Connor Sam, sophomore Leighton Voodre, and junior Gabriel Hoff. … We won’t have five experienced players to help us get low scores like we did the last two years.”
“Our top-three guys should be able to shoot in the 90s and they could get better and drop their scores a little lower,” said Telles, who has guided Riverhawk golfers to the state tournament every year in his career. “We’ve always had some very good golfers on the team over the years. One of our guys would have to finish in the top-five at regionals to qualify and that’s really going to be a challenge.”
The Riverhawks have had individual state tournament qualifiers for the last eight years. Sam, Voodre, and Hoff will be joined in the top five early this season by Logan Baumgarten and Brenden Manciu. Other players on the team include Alex Lavine, Austen Manciu, Aiden Flores and Connor Kovalchuk.
The Riverhawks begin their nine-event Special District 1 schedule March 11 in the Hood River Valley High School Invitational Tournament at 11 a.m. at Indian Creek Golf Course in Hood River. The Dalles has four tournaments in the first two weeks, including the Dufur Invitational March 15 in The Dalles.
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