Dodge City sweeps WAC tourneys for title

Red Demons’ Robinson wins playoff for POY honor

Before the 2023 spring golf season teed off in early April, veteran Dodge City High School Coach Jim Mapel knew his team would be much improved from the 2022 campaign.

After all, despite losing a couple of his top seniors to graduation, he had the bulk of his varsity players returning, and most of them were young.

Little did Mapel realize that his Red Demon team would mature into the dominant team of the Western Athletic Conference, sweeping all five tournaments and in the process easily captured the WAC championship with a perfect score of 25 points.

The WAC plays five tournaments with each school hosting one of the events. Team points are awarded on a 5-4-3-2-1 basis while the individual all-WAC teams (1st and 2nd) are determined by those same tournaments but are scored 15-14-13-12-11-10, all the way to 1 point. Points are added at the end and the top individual point’s earner is named WAC Player of the Year.

“We started the round-robin in 2006 and I like the fact that everybody gets to have a home course advantage once,” Mapel said. “It determines the best team and the best player as opposed to a one-day, 18-hole tournament where something out of the ordinary occurs and the best team doesn’t win that day.”

In this case, Mapel not only had the team title in his hip pocket at the final WAC event at Liberal’s Willow Tree Golf Course on May 2, but his top player, sophomore Aidan Robinson, was on the heels of Garden City sophomore Maddix Shook for the individual title.

That race not only went down to the final hole of regulation on the 18th hole, but then went to a sudden death playoff as both finished the five tournaments with 71.5 points. Only four total strokes had separated the two in the five tournaments.

In the extra-hole playoff, both players bogeyed the 18th hole (first hole of playoff) and on the second extra hole, Robinson made a 20-foot putt that was the difference when Shook missed his tying attempt.

Mapel could not have envisioned a more satisfying season, now on the tail end of his 29th season coaching golf at his high school alma mater. He previously had coached cross country for seven years.

“I thought we’d be better but I knew it would depend on how hard the kids would work and how much they played in the summer,” said Mapel, who also won WAC Coach of the Year honors. “I felt we would have a good chance to compete for the WAC title. I knew Aidan worked a lot on his game, but the big question was how much the others worked to get better.”

Winning the WAC is meaningful to Mapel, who last coached his team to the title in 2013. Since the WAC was organized in the 1984-1985 school year, the Demons have won 14 boys’ golf championships. The decade-long drought is now history.

“I think one of the reasons we did so well in the WAC is that we played three really strong tournaments outside of the five league tournaments,” Mapel said. “We played in the Bishop Carroll tournament (Rolling Hills Country Club in Wichita), the Newton Invitational (Sand Creek Station, site of the 6A state tournament) and Firekeeper Golf Course (located north of Topeka and host to state high school and state amateur tournaments). Those are tough courses and the competition helped us tremendously because they were all challenging.”

Mapel got supporting help from Keaton Bogner, who despite missing the first WAC tourney at Hays, did well enough in the remaining four to place fourth in the individual standings to earn 54 points and a first-team all-WAC selection. Another key to the team’s depth was the development of Grayden Gamblin, who placed sixth and took the final first-team all-WAC spot.

“Bogner didn’t play last year, but played quite a bit in the summer,” Mapel said. “We weren’t for sure that he was going to play this spring, but he improved tremendously. Gamblin’s stroke average really improved after he worked so hard on his game.”

Mapel said AJ Peters (second team all-WAC) also saw considerable improvement in lowering his tournament scores.

“All of them put in some time to get better and I think when you have a few who are competitive, sometimes they bring the others along with them,” Mapel said.

Another strong element of the Demons’ program was the fact that Mapel welcomed 21 golfers onto the team this year and didn’t cut a single player. At times, he could field three full teams and in many instances brought his junior varsity team to varsity tournaments and then also would take his two JV teams to other tournaments.

“I can think of only one other time in my time here that I had this many kids out,” Mapel reflected. “I had nine freshmen, but it was only two years ago that I had just 10 out for the team. It was a whole different atmosphere for the kids. I think we were able to get the kids good competition.”

Dodge’s Robinson ekes out narrow win for POY honors

There was little separation between sophomores Aidan Robinson of Dodge City and Maddix Shook of Garden City during the five-tournament schedule to determine Western Athletic Conference individual honors in 2023.

After five events, only four strokes divided Shook and Robinson and with the point system that has been in place for many years, the two battled back and forth and when the final putt was dropped in Liberal on May 2, the two had finished with 71.5 points each.

Shook had won three of the five WAC events – Hays, Garden City and Great Bend – while Robinson had won both at Dodge City and then captured the Liberal event on the final hole when Shook hit a shot out of bounds and finished one shot back of Robinson for the individual tournament low round among WAC schools.

Robinson, meanwhile, had one victory, three solo seconds and one tie for second. Shook had tied for third at the Dodge City Invitational for his lowest finish of the five tourneys. Shook’s 18-hole average of 72.6 was just .8 of a shot better than Robinson’s 73.4. With the point system established, the biggest difference came at Dodge’s Mariah Hills, where Shook shot a 77 (tie 3rd) and Robinson a 73 (tie 1st) but provided a two-point differential in the individual standings.

“The way everything ended it gets the adrenaline going,” Robinson said. “I knew where I was (standings) before we played that final round in Liberal. I knew where we were on 18 tee and I knew where we were when we putted out.”

In the sudden death playoff both players struggled on the first hole (the 18th), and then Robinson made the biggest putt of his high school career with the 20-foot plus winning stroke.

“It was a bomb, and I’m glad it went in,” said Robinson. “One of the cool things about the five tournaments is that we (he and Shook) get paired together so we always know how the other is doing and makes for really good competition. You just always know where you are and what you have to do.”

Robinson, whose dad Chris is the head professional at Mariah Hills Golf Course in Dodge City, said while his father has been a big influence on his game, in recent years he has gone to Wichita to see a couple of different instructors.

“It all goes into one thought process from the different people,” Robinson said. “I’ve gotten better with the putter and I’m now hitting the ball higher, and when I do that, I’m hitting it straighter.”

With a young team, Robinson said he really is excited to see how they finish the season but even more so how they will improve for 2024 if they all put in the hard work.

“I know we’re capable of better scores because we’ve not had all four players have their best days at the same tournament,” Robinson said.

But for the time being, Robinson will enjoy the fruits of his hard work in knowing that for 2023 he was the best in the WAC and so was his Dodge City team.

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2023 WAC Boys Golf Final Team Standings

Final	Team	Points
1	Dodge City	25
2	Garden City	19
2	Hays	16
4	Great Bend	10
5	Liberal	4

2023 First Team All-WAC

Rank	Player	School	Points
1	Aidan Robinson*	Dodge City	71.5
2	Maddix Shook	Garden City	71.5
2	Keith Burr	Garden City	54
4	Keaton Bogner	Dodge City	47
5	Ashton Bickle	Dodge City	45
6	Grayden Gamblin	Dodge City	44.5

2023 Second Team All-WAC

Rank	Player	School	Points
7	AJ Peters	Dodge City	43
8	Landen Clark	Hays	38.5
9	Ryan Mein	Liberal	28
10	Blake Buckles	Hays	24
11	Joe Lenenberger	Great Bend	22.5
12	Braxton Banker	Hays	18