Sierra Pilgrim, Wildcat team captain and golfer of the year, extended her post-season run yesterday at Buena Vista Golf Course by carding a solid 90 in the CIF Central Section Southern Area Championship.  After a nervous start, she settled down and started playing her game, easily beating the qualifying mark of 95 necessary to move on to the CIF Central Section Championship, better known as the Valley Golf Championship.  In addition to Pilgrim, four Kern County teams qualified yesterday.  Frontier, Liberty, Stockdale and Bakersfield Christian all move on, along with three individuals from Garces.  Sierra finished in tenth place among the 32 best golfers in the county.  The most recent Lady Cat to make it this far was Kathryn Tracy, Sierra’s good friend and mentor on the golf team, who made it to the Valley match in 2015.

Sierra was in good spirits and was striking the ball extremely well in our pre-match warm up, especially around the chipping green, where she was consistently sticking shots within 6 feet of the hole on chips and pitches from 10 to 50 yards off the green.  This great touch around the green yesterday would prove to be salvation of her round.  She was also pounding the driver long and straight on the range minutes before her round began, which she continued to do throughout the round.

Pilgrim struggled to 14-over par through her first 8 holes, including a quadruple-bogey on her second hole and a triple on her fifth.  She then caught fire and went 4-over on her final 10 holes, including a birdie on the par-5 eleventh and a great par on the difficult par-3 second, her final hole.  Other than the birdie on 11, the highlight of her round was a beautiful pitch to less than three feet on the difficult 16th hole, from way below the green near the 17th tee box, leading to a par save.  It was a clutch shot under pressure, and gave her the momentum she needed to finish her round with solid, quality golf.

Her stellar performance earns her another week of practice at BV, and a trip to River Island Country Club, near Porterville, on Monday October 30th, where she will compete against the best high school golfers in the San Joaquin Valley.