Clean sweep for Socorro Warrior girl’s golf at State

It was a clean sweep for the Socorro girls golf team, which not only won the Class 1A-3A New Mexico state title Tuesday by an astounding 116 strokes and land three golfers among the top six to all receive All-State honors, but the top two finishers were Warriors and had to go to a three-hole playoff to determine the individual state champion.

Freshman Abbegail Munguia came away with that honor, besting teammate Natasha Apodaca by two aggregate strokes.

On the boys side, Socorro rallied in the second round of the two-day tournament at Farmington’s Riverview Golf Course, moving up from fourth to second, but the Warriors could never take a serious shot at champion Mesilla Valley, who has now won four straight team titles.

Socorro sophomore Isaiah Silva did put on a strong showing, finishing second overall.

For the girls, who won for the 22nd time and fourth time in the last five seasons, going to an individual playoff was a new encounter.

“Definitely bittersweet,” said coach Kristen Griego of watching her two players vying for the blue medal.

But the players seemed to take it in stride.

“It was really fun,” Munguia said. “It was a new experience for both me and Natasha. Personally, I didn’t think of Natasha as a teammate at that moment. More of a competitor. It was little bit weird. I was also kind of thinking of it as a practice round because we do that (play alongside) each other. It was fun.”

She tried to take a positive attitude into the extra session.

“The most important thing was to stay calm through the whole thing,” Munguia said. “Don’t get too distracted with talking to your teammate or any of that. You just have to keep your composure at the end.”

She ended up shooting 81s in both rounds, while Apodaca actually had the tournament’s best round with a 79 on Tuesday after an 83 in Monday’s opening round.

Sophomore Kailyn Woods took fourth with an 89-90 179 and senior Ariana Crespin was tied for seventh with a 92-95 187.

“I think it was pretty amazing that Ariana Crespin being one of the top players in the state she was actually our fourth individual,” Griego said. “But she has been a great leader for the team. Her being our fourth counting scorer definitely shows our depth.”

The boys got off to rough starts on both days, but were still contention after the first round, sitting seven strokes behind Mesilla Valley.

But the Warriors just couldn’t put it all together to make a run.

“The one thing I’m most proud of and I’m always going to say, this team fights and they never give up,” coach Miguel Griego said. “It would have been very easy for any other team to throw in the towel after the start we had. The thing about this team is they fight and persevere to come back and they put themselves in position to get that second-place trophy.”

Silva, who shot a 72-74 146, pulling within two strokes of the lead, said getting past the SonBlazers is still going to take some work.

“Every day after school and every weekend, we’re all out there playing and getting each other better and competing,” he said. “The main thing is we’re out there having fun. We’re going to keep working at it and eventually it will come.”