If Wednesday's match with River Hill was the first real test of the season for Glenelg's boys, it's safe to say they passed with flying colors.
Behind a career-best 28 points from Adam Leake, the Gladiators cruised to a 91-77 victory over the Hawks at Hobbit's Glen golf club. The win improved Glenelg to 3-0 on the season and dropped River Hill to 1-2.
Having won its first two matches by an average 58 points, the Gladiators knew they'd have to work for what they got against a River Hill team that finished 7-2-2 last season. But thanks to a hot start from Leake, who was two-under thru five holes, and some steady play from the duo of Matt Forester (23 points) and Steven Segrist (23), Glenelg managed to still roll to another double-digit victory.
Leake's strong start was aided by escaping the first hole with a par after an errant tee shot. From there, he made birdies on Nos. 3 and 5.
"That first hole was huge, because I was behind a tree and still made par," said Leake, whose previous best score in a high school match was 25 points. "That kind of jumpstarted my round."
His only bogey of the day came when he three-putted on the ninth hole.
Like several of his teammates, Leake came into the match unfamiliar with the Hobbit's Glen course. Glenelg plays the majority of its matches at Cattail Creek every year and Leake says he personally had never previously played at Hobbits.
Ultimately, though, that didn't affect his scoring.
"My strategy was to just shoot for pars and if birdies came then great," Leake said. "Not knowing the course, I didn't try to do anything crazy."
Forester bounced back from a rough start Thursday to make back-to-back birdies on holes six and seven. Segrist, meanwhile, had seven pars and two double bogies on his way to the four-over-par day. Glenelg's Charlie Harrison rounded out the scoring with 17 points.
River Hill, which had split a tri-meet the day before against Wilde Lake and Mt. Hebron, was led by Matt Gray's 22 points. Gray was the only Hawk to score on every hole and made a birdie on No. 7.
Henry Ko (19 points), Jeremy McFarlane (18) and Greg Karas (18) were the other scorers for River Hill.
Boys box scores:
Glenelg 91, River Hill 77
G (3-0): A. Leake 28, Forester 23, Segrist 23, Harrison 17.
RH (1-2): Gray 22, Ko 19, McFarlane 18, Karas 18.
Centennial 88, Howard 75
C (1-1): Flach 28, McShane 23, Mehta 20, Humphrey 17
Ho (2-2): Andrews 26, Song 18, Park 17, Balter 14.
Reservoir 57, Long Reach 22
Re (2-1): Kendall 19, Yang 16, Leadbetter 14, Teodori 8.
LR (0-3): Tafuri 17, Appler 5.
Atholton 66, Oakland Mills 29
A (3-1): Wallace 26, Wolf 14, Robinson 13, Potter 13.
OM (0-3): Diggs 14, Bailey 10, Clyde 5.
Girls box scores:
River Hill 53, Glenelg 33
Ariana Dial scored a high school career-best 22 points, with a birdie on the seventh hole, to lead the Hawks to their third straight win to open the season.
RH (3-0): Dial 22, Feldblum 13, Rosnik 12, Hayward 6.
G (1-2): Hong 15, Cho 11, Frost 5, Castro 2.
Howard 35, Centennial 34
C (1-1): McShane 13, Kuan 12, Wojanowski 5, Kim 4.
Ho (2-1-1): Higgins 18, Song 17.
Long Reach 37, Reservoir 28
LR (3-0): Lee 21, Caspar 10, Sample 6.
Re (0-3): Howard 12, Parater 9, Gaverth 6, Trivedi 1.
Atholton 32, Oakland Mills 21
A (3-1): Mc. Fields 14, Tae 9, Peterson 6, Ma. Fields 3.
OM (0-2-1): Lewis 19, Tullis 2.