Golf tourney gone

It was supposed to be a coming out party for the Laguna Beach High girls’ golf team. But the celebration never took place.

After winning the program’s first-ever league championship, all seven Breakers “” Shannon Sweeney, Caitlin Barretto, Diana Smith, Grace Stewart, Karina Shaw, Lexy Altman and Emily Marcus “” had an invitation to compete at last week’s Golden West League championships, by virtue of Laguna winning the regular season title.

But the event never materialized at Mesa Linda Golf Course in Costa Mesa: poor air quality, a direct result of the Santiago Canyon wildfire, caused the postponement and consequently, the cancellation, of the tournament.

With the CIF Southern Division Individual championships tournament at Seven Hills Golf Course scheduled for Nov. 1, only Shaw was allowed to continue on in postseason competition, Breakers Coach Val Quigley said.

Quigley said the league decided to take the top three golfers from the regular season, to the Southern Division individuals.

Shaw was to join a golfer from both Estancia and Orange as league representatives at the CIF event.

“We were devastated, actually,” Quigley said when asked about the cancellation of the league tournament. “We had great momentum on our side the last week of the regular season. We were peaking in terms of scores, and I thought that we had a great chance to have more than one girl advance out of the league tournament to CIF. But we never got the opportunity to play it out.”

The Breakers did, however, compete Oct. 29 at the CIF Southern Division team tournament at El Prado Golf Course in Chino, where their team postseason ride came to an end. The top four teams, Torrance (369 team score), Cypress (379), Cerritos (396) and Mission Viejo (418), move on to be part of a 16-team field that will compete Monday for the Southern Division team title at Dove Canyon Country Club.

Laguna went undefeated in Golden West League play to win the first league title since the program’s inception in 1999.