Another Second Place for Harvard-Westlake

There were two ways for Harvard-Westlake High to look at the Southern Section girls’ golf finals.

The optimistic view is that after shooting one of their worst rounds of the season, the Wolverines still managed a second-place finish.

The pessimistic will say “not again.”

The Wolverines struggled, but so did most of the 15 teams Monday at Montecito Country Club.

Harvard-Westlake shot 257, 14 strokes behind champion Irvine University. It was the second consecutive runner-up finish in the section finals for the Wolverines, who finished third in 1998.

Emma Stachowicz shot seven-over-par 80 to lead Harvard-Westlake, which will advance to the CIF-WSCGA finals Nov. 28 at the SCGA Members Club in Murrieta along with University, Aliso Niguel and Villa Park.

Ina Kim, selected an All-American by the American Junior Golf Assn., said the difficult course with rolling fairways and tricky greens took its toll. She shot 82.

“I’m kind of surprised we finished this high with this score,” she said. “But I guess [the course] was playing pretty tough for everybody. I was just thinking no matter what, even if I shoot 90, I wasn’t going to give up.”

University junior Angela Won was medalist with a 75, the only score under 80 among the 60 players. Teammate Sunny Lee, a senior, shot 81, and Michelle Barth rounded out University’s scoring with 87. University was the only team to have three players break 90.