ELLSWORTH — Prescott and Ellsworth have found themselves fighting for a conference championship over the first half of the girls’ golf conference slate. Both squads have seen brilliant individual performances, but the teams as a whole have looked especially great early.

Thursday’s event at the Ellsworth Country Club was a great battle with Prescott coming out on top of Ellsworth by just two strokes for the second consecutive event. The Cardinals won the first four conference events, with Ellsworth placing second in three of them and third in one.

Prescott

Despite the four straight wins to open Middle Border Conference play, Prescott is still looking to take some major strides forward. After finishing second in their first year at Division 1 State after being moved up from Division 2, the team lost a handful of graduates who played key roles in getting the team back to State.

“We’re 4-0, but we don’t feel like we’ve played our best this year yet,” Head Coach Chad Salay said. “We have a new team this year and new leadership.”

While returning Layla Salay and Macy Reiter, four new members of the starting lineup are tasked with catching up quickly. Those four are Lily Vesperman, Ruby Johnson, Brooklyn Goehring and Addison Kellogg.

“The biggest one has been Lily Vesperman, one of our juniors,” Salay said. “If the season ended today, she’d be first team all-conference, so that’s pretty amazing coming out of being a JV player for a couple years.”

Salay credited all the newest varsity golfers for stepping up to the plate and contributing solid scores to the team to keep the depth.

Reiter also got the win in Ellsworth, the first conference individual win for Prescott on the year.

“That’s huge on any team any year to have five [solid golfers]. A lot of people only have two or three and then they just have to count somebody,” Salay said. “We really do have almost six that we can count.”

The difference between this team securing another State berth, Salay said, will be how quickly the new golfers can gain all-around experience as well as the whole team improving their short game. He said they can drive as good as any team, so it is time to focus on putting.

Prescott nearly dropped its first conference event in about four years, according to Salay, but found a way to come back late. He said having their backs against the wall late in postseasons helps for moments like these.

“We’ve had those feelings at State tournaments, so for us you don’t hit the panic button,” Salay said.

Ellsworth

Currently second in the conference, Ellsworth is having a great year with hopes of making a State push of their own.

“It just has to come all together at one time. We’re close, we’ve shown that we can be close, we just haven’t finished yet,” Head Coach Carson Huppert said. “We’ve got to get that confidence level where we are capable of finishing and work on our short game a little bit.”

The Panthers have had three golfers finish in the top two during a conference event this year. Senior Lexi Marks, who has gone to State individually twice in her career, has picked up a win and a second-place finish in four conference events.

“She can strike the ball pretty phenomenally when she’s on her game, and she’s shown that by being in the State tournament two years in a row,” Huppert said. “We’re hoping for big things from her, and I believe that we’ll see the best Lexi when we need to see it.”

Junior Emma Helgeson finished second in Ellsworth and senior Addy Huppert finished second an event prior. Ellsworth’s final trio of Nora Feuerhelm, Marley Halverson and Aubrey Marks have all shown flashes of brilliance.

Huppert said they made some mistakes to give up the lead. He knows the team will be at its best come tournament time, so they just have to take away what they can from events like the one in Ellsworth.

“We were in first for a while and then we let that slip away,” Huppert said. “You’ve just got to make these learning experiences to get yourself better.

“Confidence. They all can do it, we’ve just got to get them to do it,” Huppert said. “It’s there, we’ve just got to have them all click at the same time.”