RICHMOND – The Tri-Village girls’ golf team went undefeated in the conference during the regular season and made a clean sweep of things by winning the Western Ohio Athletic Conference Tournament at The Elks Country Club in Richmond, Indiana to become the 2025 WOAC Girls Golf Conference Champions.
The WOAC in its five years has had two conference champions. Tri-Village won in 2021, 2022, 2025 and Arcanum in 2023 and 2024. Those two teams would battle it out in the regular season and in the 2025 tournament. Tri-Village squeaked by in the regular season by one stroke … but won convincingly in the 18-hole tournament by 27 strokes over 2nd place Arcanum.
Here are the 18-hole team scores … Franklin Monroe and Dixie didn’t have enough players for a full team score.
Team Scores
Tri-Village 400
Arcanum 427
National Trail 451
Mississinawa Valley 484
Ansonia 501
Franklin Monroe
Dixie
The Top 10 golfers via points accumulated during the season and tournament become 1st team all-conference.
First Team All-Conference
Tri-Village – Lyla Brewer
Arcanum – Adalyn Paul
National Trail – Jocelyn Osborne
Mississinawa Valley – Makenna Hoggatt
Tri-Village – Annabeck Spencer
Tri-Village – Kash Mead
Arcanum – Saide Waldo
Tri-Village – Addie Pipenger
Tri-Village – Taytum Gray
National Trail – Ava Spalding
Arcanum – Ella Warren
Special Mention All-Conference
Ansonia – Sloan Gariety
Arcanum – Brooklynn Eley
Dixie – Sophie Clifford
Franklin Monroe – Caroline Knight
Mississinawa – Cora Hoggatt
National Trail – Allison Snyder
Tri-Village – Abby Hampton
Coach of the Year
Tri-Village – Lee Morris
Team Champion
Tri-Village
Golfer of the Year
Tri-Village – Lyla Brewer
Tri-Village coach Lee Morris was in Europe and unable to coach his girls team in the WOAC tournament and Athletic Director Brad Gray would put on his golf coaching visor to fill in.
Morris would be named by his peers as the 2025 WOAC Girls “Coach of the Year”.
“Obviously, it was a last-minute thing for me to fill coach Morris, so, there was a little nerves, knowing the magnitude of what today meant for our kids. But I thought they did a great job of just staying the course and, playing the game of golf the way they know how and I thought our girls had a really good day,” Gray stated.
In fact, the girls did so well that the top five lady golfers made first team with the 6th golfer Abby Hampton garnering Special Mention as well.
“Personally, it sounds like they had good days, because during the regular season I know they matched up with Arcanum of a couple times and they were always tight races, but today, I think there was kind of a little bit of separation,” Gray added.
I had to ask Brad if he would attribute that to his coaching style verses Lee’s.
“Well, I do feel like I should be taking half of that plaque home with me because I got stuck coaching the tournament which carries the most weight,” Gray chuckled.
“But no, the girls have put in a lot of work in the off season, and this is a young team so hopefully the future is bright,” Gray stated.
He also had high praise for Lyla Brewer who was named the 2025 WOAC Girls “Golfer of the Year”.
“Obviously she had a great day today with an 86, and to win all of her individual matches through the regular season, then do it in the tournament is impressive for a freshman,” Gray concluded.
Lyla Brewer’s sister Regan was the WOAC golfer of the year her sophomore, junior and senior years … but Lyla has done something she didn’t, by winning “Golfer of the Year” as a freshman and an opportunity to possibly win it four times in her career … only time will tell.
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Arcanum and National Trail are 2025 WOAC Boys Golf Co-Champions
RICHMOND – The National Trail boys golf team had a perfect 11-0 regular season record in head-to-head matchups heading into the Western Ohio Athletic Conference Tournament at The Elks Club in Richmond, Indiana. Arcanum was just one game back with a 10-1 record and Preble Shawnee in third place at 9-2.
In five years of WOAC play there has been one outright champion, National Trail last season. The other four championships have all been shared when the 2nd place team won the season ending tournament to force a co-championship.
In 2021 and 2022 both Arcanum and Newton shared the title. In 2023 Newton shared with National Trail. Trail won outright in 2024 and in 2025 the Blazers and Trojans will share it.
Arcanum was able to capture their share of the league title in exciting fashion after finishing in a tie with National Trail as both teams deadlocked with 330 for the 18-hole tournament.
A tiebreaker then determined the tournament winner by going back to the 5th golfer for each team. Arcanum’s 5th player junior Aiden Carlisle shot 88 and National Trail’s 5th player senior Sawyer Davies had an 89 giving the nod to Arcanum winning the WOAC Tournament.
National Trail who won the regular season and Arcanum’s tournament win created another Co-Championship in 2025.
Team Scores
Arcanum 330
National Trail 330
Preble Shawnee 336
Newton Local 341
Tri-County North 359
Franklin Monroe 363
Tri-Village 374
Mississinawa Valley 379
Dixie 379
Twin Valley South 388
Ansonia 389
Bradford 417
Coming into post season tournament National Trail’s Kellen Laird was the top golfer in points, but he would have to share the Individual Golf Medalist of the year award with Arcanum’s Luke Stephens. Stephens by winning the WOAC Tournament accumulated enough points to create a tie with Laird and both earned 2025 “Golfer of the Year” award.
The Top 10 golfers via points accumulated become 1st team all-conference.
First Team All-Conference
Arcanum – Luke Stephens
National Trail – Kellen Laird
Newton – Will Bouser
Mississinawa – Jackson Beanblossom
Preble Shawnee – Levi Agee
National Trail – Josh Brubaker
Dixie – Dillon Phillips
Ansonia – Byron Young
Tri-Village – Cohen Burns
Newton – Rhett Koffer
Special Mention All-Conference
Ansonia – Ryder Sanders
Arcanum – Daniel Kerns
Bradford – Bronson Schnurpel
Dixie – Brayden Puckett
Franklin Monroe – Brandt Filbrun
Mississinawa – Cole Hines
National Trail – Wyatt Gebhart
Newton – Alec Schaurer
Preble Shawnee – Will Gulley
Tri-County North – Brayden Bacher
Tri-Village – Brecken Gray
Twin Valley South – Parker Howard
Coach of the Year
Arcanum – Kip Gray
Team Champions
Arcanum & National Trail
Golfer of the Year
Arcanum – Luke Stephens
National Trail – Kellen Laird
Arcanum Coach Kip Gray who was named by his peers the WOAC 2025 “Coach of the Year” was pleasantly surprised by his team’s performance in the post season tournament … but not totally shocked either that they found a way to sneak in to grab a share of the team title.
“Monday night, we shot a 198 at Versailles and leaving there we kind of had a heart-to-heart talk on the bus ride home. Tuesday we came out and shot a 167 so I felt like we were turning in the right direction. Early in the round, it didn’t look great and to see them persevere the way they did, to end up shooting the scores that they did, I couldn’t be prouder,” Gray stated.
“Our day couldn’t have gone any better, obviously with Luke shooting 73, he came in big for us and was able to sneak in there as co-medalist of the year,” Gray commented.
“This team all year has found a way to win, I like to go back to our first conference match of the year with Tri-Village where we had to go to the fifth score to get the win. Then we had to do the same here in the post season tournament to finish as WOAC Co-Champs. It just shows you the quality of kids we have that they somehow can find a way to win,” coach Gray concluded.
The Two golfers of the year had nothing but respect for each other and the opposing team.
National Trail’s Kellen Laird had respect for Arcanum after the tournament.
“You have to give credit to Arcanum, they’ve worked hard all year, coming from where they were at the beginning of the year and rebounding from our head-to-head match a few weeks ago where maybe they weren’t as competitive to now beating us today in a tiebreaker which is great for them. That really shows their work ethic throughout the year and just how they’ve continued to grow,” Laird praised.
“At the same time, it gives us pause as a team to know we need to grow from this, take a step back as a team and realize that we still got work to do going into the postseason,” Laird added.
“For myself and our other seniors it means a lot to us and for our school to win our 3rd straight league title, that’s something we can be proud about … but a lot of credit for this goes to our coach (Ramon Rutan). He’s put in a lot of time and effort into training us and getting the program where he wants it to be. It is kind of bittersweet knowing that we’ve accomplished all these things but it’s almost the end for me,” Laird said.
Kellen was also complimentary of being Co-Medalist of the year with Luke Stephens.
“There are a lot of good individual golfers in our league and Luke is a great golfer. I’ve played with him the last two years and have seen him improve and get better and better,” Laird complimented.
Team’s Arcanum junior golfer Luke Stephens about his top individual tournament score of 73 and the team’s tie-breaker victory to win the postseason tournament.
Stephens admitted he has been dealing with a back injury.
“I felt looser and a lot better today, he remarked after shooting 73. That score earned him Tournament medalist honors and was good enough to become co-player of the year with Kellen Laird.
It was just a few short weeks ago where Arcanum came up short in their match with National Trail and Stephens didn’t have his best round … but he and his team would redeem themselves.
“Our team came in clutch, everyone had a good day, it could be considered a big upset, they (National Trail) are really good, but over the past week we have been playing a lot better, and this was a good win.” Stephens concluded.
