CHILLIWACK, B.C. – A week after earning victories on both the men's and women's sides at the Cascade Classic, the Thunderbirds returned to the Chilliwack Golf Club this past weekend and took down three inter-provincial opponents – UFV, UBC Okanagan and Victoria – in a match play tournament.
Match play is different from a typical team tournament format, as rather than tallying up stroke counts for an entire round, players will instead be matched against a single opponent from another team and play them in individual competition. Each hole is its own mini contest, and the player that wins the most holes in their one-on-one matchup wins a point for their team.
Both T-Birds squads were victorious at the conclusion of the three-round tournament, with each round featuring five Thunderbirds going up against players from one of their three opponents. The women didn't lose a single matchup, earning a 13-0-2 record, while the men finished 8-3-4 as a team, with three more wins than their closest competitors.
On the women's side, the trio of
Sienna Harder,
Keira Hou and
Sarah Yang all went three-for-three in the tournament, with Harder winning by at least four holes in each round.
Morgan Best won both of her first two matchups before tying UBCO's Bess Chan in the final round, while
Grace Yao emerged victorious in rounds two and three after coming in for
Katherine Hao following the latter's first-round draw against Coral Hamade of UFV.
For the men,
Hunter Auramenko and
Manpreet Lalh were the top performers with two wins and a tie each, which for Auramenko included a victory over his brother Zach in UBC's battle against UFV in the opening round.
Elsewhere in the team,
Leighton Wright bounced back from a first-round loss to record back-to-back wins against the Heat and Vikes, while
Jake Houston and
Aneesh Kaura each posted 1-1-1 records.
After a couple of events close to home, the T-Birds will be back in Cascade Collegiate Conference action in two weeks' time, when they travel to Portland for the Tournament of Knights hosted by Warner Pacific on April 13 and 14. It's their final action before the CCC Championships in Idaho at the end of the month.
