The Vacaville High boys golf team had wristbands this year that had two sayings on them – keep your goals on your mind and go get the banner.
The first part the Bulldogs looked at all year long. They were finally able to look at the second saying with more pride on Thursday afternoon as Vacaville won a league title for the 14th consecutive year.
The Bulldogs shot a 231 at Paradise Valley Golf Course on Thursday afternoon, good enough to defeat Rodriguez High by 20 strokes and Vanden High by 23 strokes to win the No. 1 seed out of the Monticello Empire League. The Bulldogs move on to play in the sectional tournament at Copper Valley on May 6.
It capped a perfect second half of the season for Vacaville. After going 7-3 in the first ten matches of the year, the Bulldogs went 10-0 in the second half.
“It took a lot of grit to win it this year,” Vacaville head coach Tony Onisko said. “We had to grind a lot. Golf is a lot more mental than people think it is. It was a challenging season and I told each golfer to challenge themself in some way during the year.”
Vacaville lost to Rodriguez and Vanden early in the season, but soon turned things around.
“The first half of the year we were kind of unlucky,” Vacaville golfer Ben Wilhite said. “We were missing one of our top golfers Ian Hall. But once we got him back we mentally thought that nobody could beat us and that confidence helped.”
Wilhite was able to contribute heavily as well. He shot a team-low of 84 on Thursday to win the MEL Golfer of the Year Award.
“It felt good to win it this year,” Wilhite said. “That was one of my top goals when the season started because last year I was leading for the majority of the year but lost the top spot late in the season. So it felt nice to finalize it this year and close everything out.
After Wilhite’s 84, the Bulldogs were led by Issac Johns who shot an 84, and Issac Martinez who shot an 88. Hall and Quinn Strachen each shot a 91, while Owen Banuelos shot a 92.
“Everyone did their part with their own goals and challenges,” Onisko said. “For instance I challenged Owen (Banuelos) to shoot under 100 and he did. During the year Wednesdays became our skill days in practice, whether it be with chipping or putting and that became a benchmark for us.”
Although Vacaville had previously won 13 straight league titles, Martinez said the team tried not to think of the end goal, but focus on the next step ahead.
“Personally I think I went day-to-day a lot and went match-by-match,” Martinez said. “We all thought it would be great to win another league title, but let’s just focus on the match ahead and everything will work itself out.”
Onisko was in his first year as head coach and he said he thought about the consecutive league titles a lot.
“I’ve been on the staff for years, but this was my first year as head coach. So I didn’t want to be the one that ruined the streak of league titles since it was my first year.”
Wilhite felt the same way.
“It’s pretty special to win and last year it felt the same way,” Wilhite said. “Nobody wanted to be on a team that didn’t win the title.”
