Saturday the Pinewood golf team won the largest high school golf tournament in the country.
The Panthers placed first at the Palmetto High School Golf Championship, which featured 72 teams from 15 states and Canada.
Play opened Thursday with all 72 teams participating in an 18-hole qualifier at Sea Trails Plantation in Little River, N.C.
At the end of the day, the 72 teams were divided into five flights based upon their score for the day.
The Panthers led the entire field, shooting a 292, 4 over par, to best second-place finisher Parkside Baptist of Louisiana by seven shots.
Austin Cody led the Panthers with a 1 under 71 with Kamito Hirai and Richard Hubbard shooting even par 72s and Lushen Evans coming in with a 77.
With the finish, the Panthers earned their way into the championship flight, a 36-hole event played on two different courses over the next two days.
Friday saw the 15-team championship flight open play at Pawley’s Plantation.
With winds gusting to over 40 mph scores rose dramatically.
However, the Panthers again dominated the field, shooting 318 to earn them the lead over Spring Valley High School from Columbia.
Cody led the field with an incredible even par 72, 14 shots better than the average score.
Richard Hubbard had a 78 and Kamito Hirai had a 79 to help stake the Panthers to their lead.
At the end of the round, the Panthers found themselves 10 shots ahead of second place Spring Valley and 11 ahead of Forsythe Country Day school out of North Carolina.
“The playing conditions, because of the wind, were perhaps the worst I have seen in nine years of coaching,” Pinewood coach Greg Baechtle said.
“On the back nine, there were several holes out along the marsh and the wind was blowing so hard it made standing upright difficult. The 72 that Austin had was simply amazing. I was told by the tournament director that pro tour player D.J. Trahan played the course last week, from the same tees in similar wind, and shot 79.”
On Saturday, the teams traveled back up to North Carolina to play Tiger’s Eye at Ocean Ridge Plantation.
The Panthers again led the field, shooting 298. Hirai led the Panthers with a 1 under 71; Cody had a 73; Hubbard had a 75; and Evans had a 79. The Panthers’ 298 bested second-place Spring Valley by three shots to give the Panthers a 13-shot margin of victory.
“Kamito had a great round on Saturday; he came through for us when we needed it,” Baechtle said. “We were pretty close with the other teams in our matches, but Kamito came up big, beating his Spring-Valley opponent by 5 and the player from Forsythe by 8 to help keep our lead intact.”
Cody captured the individual championship with a two-day total of 143.
Hirai finished second at 150 and Hubbard came in sixth with a 153 total.
This marks the fourth trip to the event for the Panthers.
In their first trip, the Panthers finished second in the first flight. However, the past three years the Panthers have qualified for the championship flight and improved with each year.
In 2007, they finished 14th. Last year, they improved to ninth before finally capturing the event this year.