Four of a kind: Pine Island/Zumbrota-Mazeppa having history-making golf season

May 21—Anders Larson's demeanor when asked about the history-making season his team is having, is the same demeanor he carries on the golf course.

Calm, collected and confident.

"Every time you come back after playing 18, we want our team score to be low and you want your own score to be low, too," Larson said. "You want to win. That's what it's all about.

"It's a team effort."

As he looks around the range or the golf course during a practice he sees a group of teammates with the same attitudes. There is plenty of fun to be had on the range and during practice rounds for this laid-back Pine Island/Zumbrota-Mazeppa team, but the competitive fires ignite when it's time to tee it up in a meaningful meet.

"We push each other, yet we set our own goals and want to be the team to beat," said Larson, a junior in his first season on the PIZM varsity after having played baseball through his freshman season. "Every time we go out, even if it's playing nine at practice, we want to beat each other. It's a competitive group, but we have fun with it."

Larson is one of four interchangeable parts at the top of the PIZM lineup. Senior Jake Smith and sophomores Michael and Jacob Scripture — twin brothers and sophomores — have been the team's four scorers in five of the team's six meets this spring, with no clear-cut distinction between them.

Any one of them could be the team's top scorer in any given meet, and that top scorer is likely to be the meet medalist. Larson has been the medalist in three of the Wildcats' six meets this year, while Smith has earned medalist honors twice.

"We have a really solid top five or six, with Collin (Fogarty) and (Jag Foster)," PIZM head coach Mark Moran said. "They're all driven to be our No. 1, but we just have the idea of 'who really cares who's No. 1?' Hopefully they all take their turn at No. 1 and they all stay close. When it comes time to count (scores) at the end, we hope we're all way up at the top and they can all be in the top 10 in whatever tournament we're in."

That competitive drive has the PIZM team in a position that the program has never been in: It's the favorite to win the Section 1AA championship, which would carry with it the program's first-ever state meet berth. According to Minnesota State High School League records, Zumbrota made one state-meet trip on its own, but a section title this year would be a first for Pine Island, Zumbrota-Mazeppa and the PIZM co-op.

"That would be awesome," said Smith, in his sixth season with the high school team. "We've talked about it, being the first team to possibly go to state, and maybe have a chance at winning it, who knows?

"It's confidence boosting to think about that, that we could be the first (PIZM) team to go."

The Wildcats have proved throughout this spring that they're not only competitive with the other top teams in the section — PIZM's Hiawatha Valley League rivals Lake City, Rochester Lourdes and Stewartville among that group — but that they can consistently beat those strong programs.

PIZM, which averages a score of 311.3 as a team this season, has won all six meets it has played this spring, with its team score dipping as low as a program record-setting 298 at Lake City Golf Club on May 11.

The Wildcats' top four all average in the 70s, which is often a winning formula in high school golf. Larson leads the way with a 75.3 scoring average, followed by Michael Scripture (77.7), Smith (79.7) and Joseph Scripture (79.8).

Larson hasn't finished outside of the top three in any meet this season, while Michael Scripture has placed in the top five at all six of PIZM's meets. Smith and Joseph Scripture have finished outside the top 10 just once each.

"With those three, it seems like they'll shoot in the 70s one day and I'll shoot in the 80s," Smith said. "Then the next (meet) it's the other way around. That's just the way it's been for us.

"It pushes us to want to be better every time we play."