A dominant day on the course turned into hardware and celebrations for the Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk girls golf team at the River Valley Conference Championships Wednesday at Muscatine Municipal Golf Course.
Mid-Prairie claimed the River Valley team title with their round of 375, beating the field by a monstrous 22 strokes, with Camanche a distance second at 397. Olivia Swartzendruber won the individual RVC title with her round of 82. She’s the first girls player in Mid-Prairie history to win conference. Other Golden Hawk scores included Morgyn Bender 90, Noelle Nelson 101, Macie Ihrig 102, Delani Blum 104 and Paiton Chittick 121. After the awards ceremony the happy group of Hawks joined KCII Sports to talk about their win.
The Golden Hawks said, “We met with all our teammates and we looked at the scores on the windows. We added up everyone’s scores and we shot pretty well. We knew our number was going to be hard to beat. Winning it is hard to do once, but I’m so glad we’ve been able to do it this many times. It’s just crazy honestly. (Head coach Tracy McArtor) knew we had it in us this whole. He’s been so great. He keeps pushing us. It felt really good to win, for him because he knew we could do it. These championships makes us feel good about the direction this program is going in. Tracy has worked for years on this program and we’re glad it’s paying off. Knowing they have had success at conference and going to state all those years and we’re continuing on.”
Swartzendruber, Bender, Nelson, Ihrig and Blum were named All-River Valley Conference with Swartzendruber and Bender First-Team selections. Along with Swartzendruber’s piece of history, it’s the first time in program history the Golden Hawks have won three league championships in a four-year-stretch, finishing first in 2023 and 2024.
The title moves Mid-Prairie’s record to 37-5 on the season.