By Brian Shaw | [email protected]

Heading into the 2022 season, Cottonwood girls golf head coach Gregg Southwick said he knew his team was still a bit on the younger side.

“I know we should be a lot better,” he said back in August 2021. “I just don’t know how good we will be.”

The Colts coach who is also the school’s athletic director added that with the travel that his team must do, he wasn’t entirely sure what to expect going into a new region like Region 7.

Southwick’s Colts squad had finished in fifth place in their final year in the old Region 6, but there was an inkling that Cottonwood would fare even better in the new region.

It turned out that Southwick’s hunch was correct. Out of the six competing schools in girls golf in Region 7, Cottonwood finished in third place this year with a team scoring average of 434.9.

What’s more is that the Colts had a new star who was ready to tee off.

Sophomore Hailey Crowell finished 12th among all Region 7 golfers with a 105.3 18-hole stroke average this year. It was the first time in several years that a Cottonwood girls golfer finished in the top 15 in any individual final standings.

One week after qualifying out of Region 7, Crowell moved on to the 5A state tournament at the River Oaks Golf Course in Sandy. The sophomore started with two double bogeys on her first two holes, but nearly hit for par on hole 3 before hitting another double bogey.

Crowell also double-bogeyed the fourth hole, but played well on hole 5 and scored a bogey to highlight her day—her first ever at the state tournament. She finished well off the cut line for the final round with a plus-57 over the 18 holes at River Oaks.

It seemed like the par-3 holes on the winding, scenic and sweeping course were the best ones for Crowell, who never hit more than five strokes on each of River Oaks’ five par-3s.

For her efforts, the Cottonwood sophomore Crowell also found her name on the Par-3 leaderboard at the 5A state tournament, tied for 31st.