State College boys golf makes history by winning the program’s first PIAA team state championship
State College’s boys golf team won its first state championship in program history, bringing home the PIAA Class 3A Team Championship trophy from Heritage Hills Golf Resort in York on Monday.
The team as a whole shot +8 (292 total) to defeat the pool of Fox Chapel (+8, 292), LaSalle College (+15, 299), Central Bucks West (+16, 300), Dallastown (+19, 303) and Dallas (+45, 329). State College entered a team playoff with Fox Chapel for the win.
Senior John Olsen waited for this moment for his entire career at State College. The two-sport athlete, who also stars on the hockey team, had to balance both practices at the culmination of the golf season. But it paid off as the senior made history with the Little Lions.
“This means a lot to us because we were the first State College team to go to the state championship, and to win it on the first try — by a pretty good score — means a lot to what everybody has put in,” Olsen said. “It was well-deserved, really; we all went at it. It’s my senior year, too. It’s definitely really cool.”
Junior Luke Janac, Olsen’s fellow teammate on both the course and the ice, chimed in from the high school parking lot, where the team arrived to a gathering of cheering fans with a police escort.
“It was really awesome to win because you can’t take that away from us and we all played great,” Janac said.
Olsen (-1) finished shooting under par (71) with a 70, with Maxwell Wager shooting 72 (+1), Janac scoring 74 (+3) and Joey Sabol scoring 76 (+5). Thomas Hay finished outside of the team’s scoring by shooting 84 (+13).
Winning this title was the culmination of a full year of hard work for the Little Lions.
“It really means a lot to our team,” Wager said. “We really have put in a lot of hard work and effort through practices and matches through all of this time. It really means a lot to see our team come together, fight it out, grind it out against a lot of tough teams to get to the state championship first of all, and then to actually win it is amazing.”
The Little Lions had a long year cut out for them with successes all of the way through. They took part in Operation Our Town in Altoona. Then, they went on to take second place in both the Ligonier Valley Invitational and the Hershey Invitational. Olsen won the Wheeling Invitational and the team cleared even more milestones.
With a 23-8 overall record and a 22-8 Mid Penn record, State College went on to become the District 6 sectional champions, with Olsen winning the individual district championship and qualifying for the PIAA individual championships. Then they became the Western Regional champions with Olsen medaling. Eight players qualified for the Mid Penn Individual final, with Olsen winning a silver medal.
But even all of those accomplishments pale in comparison to bringing home the top prize.
“Winning the state title is pretty important and pretty cool because we’re the No. 1 team in the state, and that’s pretty awesome,” Sabol said.
Winning the state championship is something head coach Greg Wilson, now in his six year at the helm of the Little Lions, has envisioned for this team for years — ever since he saw Olsen play for the first time as an eighth grader.
Throughout his tenure, Wilson has seen the hard work that this team has put in on the course to reach this point. Sometimes there were long mornings to work on putting and evenings that began to drag on at the driving ranges. Nevertheless, his team pushed through to perfect its craft and work toward the ultimate goal of hoisting the state championship trophy in victory.
“This has been a team that we’ve been thinking about winning a state title for years,” Wilson said. “I saw the first time [Olsen] came to play and I told my assistant and I said, ‘With John coming in as a ninth-grader, with Max Wager coming up, Luke [Janac] coming in, by the time John’s a senior, I think we’ll have a real shot at the state title.’
“They proved it. Here we are — state champions.”
