Langley Captures State Golf Title

Matt DiSalvo’s two-day score of 144 powered Langley to the VHSL’s Class AAA state championship at Laurel Hill Golf Club in Lorton on Tuesday. The red-haired senior led four Saxons who finished in the top-20 of the eight-team, 72-player tournament.

The McLean school finished nine strokes ahead of Northern Region rival Chantilly and James River was third. Mills Godwin’s Mark Lawrence won the individual title in a one-hole playoff over Griffin Clark of Thomas Dale.

Chris Brugge (77-72—149), Edric Wung (74-76—150) and Will Byrne (73-78—151) scorched the par-71 course across the street from South County Secondary School for the Saxons’ first state title in 10 years. Those players carded the best two-day scores for Langley, while Chad Deese's (155) second-round 77 contributed to the team's score on Tuesday.

“It’s huge, it’s really big,” said DiSalvo when asked what it meant to earn the state title in his final day as a high school golfer. “We just love playing golf and we just played our own game and played well.”

Langley entered Day 2 of the tournament with  a five-shot lead over James River and an eight-shot advantage over Chantilly. Only the Saxons and Chargers broke 300 on Day 2 (295 to 296) as the Northern Region squads solidified their position atop the leaderboard.

“Northern Region golf has really come around over the last eight or nine years,” said Saxons coach Al Berg. While some of the warmer regions in the state don’t have to worry about bad winters, he said, the Langley and Chantilly programs are competitive, deep teams.

“They have a lot of really fine golfers,” Berg said of the Chargers.

The key to a successful program, the kind that can contend for the state title each season, seems to be developing strong golfers in each class. The result, both Berg and DiSalvo said, is an internal team competition all season long which pays off in districts, regional and state competition.

“We really push each other and make each other better players,” said DiSalvo, who hopes to play college golf next year. “It becomes competitive between us [which helps] against better teams.”

Brugge, a sophomore who won the Northern Region tournament last week thanks to a new belly putter, struggled on Day 1 and left his non-traditional putter in the car for Day 2. He sliced five strokes off his score on Tuesday, and said he switched back to the standard-length putter in order to gain more touch on the greens. His move helped secure the championship for the Saxons.

While he had a great season as a 10^th-grader, Brugge said he knows he has to improve over the next 10 months if he has any chance of playing better in 2012. Berg would be happy to hear that.

“The biggest thing is what they do between now and next August,” the coach said. “If they sit around and rest on their laurels, we won’t be any better next year.”

Derrick Paxton, a junior, also played in the tournament for Langley, posting a two-day score of 170.

Berg said he’s looking forward to seeing which players will make the team in 2012.

“If they want to play for Langley, they know they’re going to have to excel. … Next year we’ll have two spots open in the starting lineup,” he said. “I’ve got half a dozen kids who are going to be playing their guts out in the offseason trying to get those two spots.”