First Tee – Silicon Valley’s Spring Pre-Season 4-Person Golf Tournament was a smashing success on Saturday, February 26th at Rancho del Pueblo! We held a pink ball 4-person tournament with Santa Clara University Men’s and Women’s golfers joining our participants. The tournament was our largest in recent memory with 80 golfers total including 60 FTSV students playing.
The theme for the tournament was collaboration with a team format where each team of 4 worked together to compete against the other groups. To promote mentorship, each group was composed of a Par student, Birdie student, an Eagle/Ace student, and a SCU team member. Not only was the SCU player helping our participants, but our older participants were mentoring the younger ones as well.
As far as the competitive results go, it was highly competitive at the top of the leaderboard, with the top 5 teams being separated by a total of 5 strokes. The top five were as follows:
Team Results
(Pink Ball Score + Low Ball Score)
1st Place: Team Score of 62
Johnny Ward (SCU), Li An Panfil (Ace), Vincent Vo (Birdie), Audrey Schroeder (Par)
2nd Place: Team Score of 63
Maddison Spiess (SCU), Joshua Jang (Ace), Katie Hwang (Birdie), Edwin Sanchez (Par)
3rd Place: Team Score of 64
Naomi Wong (SCU), Brian Yu (Ace), Jacob Hwang (Birdie), Jesse Jang (Par)
4th Place: Team Score of 66
Nolan Forsman (SCU), Amy Tran (Ace), Alejandro Chavez (Birdie), Nia Espiritu (Par)
5th Place: Team Score of 67
Jack Avrit* (SCU), Brady Stidham (Ace), Sahara Huchim Velasquez (Birdie), Samuel Tran (Par)
*Worthy to note that Jack Avrit is an alum of First Tee – Central Coast.
The course contest was Closest to the Pin on Hole #2. The green was quite difficult for the participants to hit Saturday, but there were two winners. Norah Yang won the Ace/Eagle division with an impressive shot to 14 feet. The winner for Par, and overall closest, was Audrey Schroeder with a shot to 9 feet of the pin! The top three teams will be receiving FTSV cinch bags and the Closest to the Pin winners will be getting FTSV hats.
It was a very exciting day at Rancho del Pueblo! We had fun, achieved our goals, met new people, and welcomed Santa Clara University golfers to join our community. FTSV owes a HUGE thanks to the SCU Men’s Coach, Andrew Larkin, for bringing both the Men’s and Women’s teams out! He said, “My players had a ton of fun and enjoyed mentoring the FTSV participants. We look forward to future partnerships and events with your organization.
FTSV Par level and above participants be on the lookout for our Chapter Championship after this Spring season on May 21st. Our pre-season tournaments are a great way to gain competitive experience in a fun and supportive environment. For more information on our pre-season tournaments, please contact Robby Keith at [email protected], 408-288-2934, or visit our youth opportunity page.
