Owen Pasvogel, Discovery Canyon start boys golf season with win at Spartan Invite

COLORADO SPRINGS — Owen Pasvogel couldn’t help himself. On the 12th tee box, his curiosity got the better of him, so he asked the scorekeeper a simple question.

“What’s the low score right now?”

He was told the low score was 2-over.

“Well I’m at 1-over.”

Well then, the low score is 1-over.

So with three holes left to play, the senior-to-be from Discovery Canyon changed his approach and decided to play like he had a lead.

“I saw a lot of kids at 1-under during the round so I thought that I needed to make a couple of birdies to finish,” he said. “Once I knew (that I had the lead), I knew I just had to hit fairways and hit greens.”

And he did just that to end with a 1-over-par 72 on Monday to come away with the individual championship at the Doherty Spartan Invitational.

To top it all off, his teammates added plenty of support and it was the Thunder who also came away with the team title, shooting 226 as a unit.

“It felt great just to see what the kids were going to do,” coach Mark Liggett said. “They’ve been playing all summer and in a lot of tournaments and it’s carrying over to right now.”

For the most part, it was never a question as to which team was going to come away with the win. Pasvogel and Caleb Blackburn each had their name atop the leaderboard at least once throughout the round and Hayden Fry was consistently near the top as well.

Fry finished at 4-over while Blackburn ended his day at 5-over.

So it was the individual race that provided most of the drama at the Colorado Springs Country Club. Palmer’s Arick Roberts sank a birdie on the 18th to move to 2-under, which was tied for the lead at that point. With his day over, all he could do is wait around to see if anyone would be able to beat that number.

“I wasn’t playing great all day and I had to finish strong,” Roberts said. “I always like to start out strong because you can always fall back and relax when you get a good score out there.”

It was only a few minutes later that Pasvogel sank his birdie on the 11th. He nearly pushed the lead to two strokes on the 12th green, but just ran the ball past the hole on his downhill putt.

“I knew I put a good stroke on it, I just hit it too firm,” Pasvogel said. “I had nice, easy, uphill, right to left breaking putt (after that) which is my favorable putt.”

Rampart ended with the best score of all the Class 5A teams in the tournament, ending the day at 238. They finished second place overall, only behind Discovery Canyon. It was an encouraging sign for the Rams to see early success against a lot of teams from the Colorado Springs Metro League.

“We emphasize that the offseason is important so I want my kids to play well in the summer,” coach Scott Blatnick said. “So to come out and play like this in their first round, it shows that they worked hard all summer.”

Cameron Como had the best finish for the Rams, ending his day at 4-over.