Advance's Whitson takes his final shot at state golf tournament

The Advance High school golf team is competing in the MSHSAA Class 1 state tournament today and Tuesday at the Fremont Hills Country Club in Nixa, Missouri.

That statement would have sounded other worldly five years ago when the Hornets did not have a golf team, and it may sound just as bizarre five years from now, as an uncertain future waits to play out for the program.

As for now, it's 2016, the fourth year this window of golf has been open at Advance, and senior Brian Whitson has made the most of the opportunity.

He's one of three seniors in a bare-minimum group that is rounded out by a sophomore, Carson Miles.

Brian Whitson watches a drive at the SEMO Conference Tournament last month at Fox Haven Country Club in Sikeston, Missouri.Fred Lynch

Whitson already has received his diploma along with teammates Spence Lorch and Creighton Miles, but he's hoping to claim one final medalist honor this season before moving on to play at John A. Logan College next year in Carterville, Illinois.

Whitson was the Class 1 runner-up last year and has followed it up with a dominant season this year in Southeast Missouri.

"I set pretty high expectations going into my senior year, but I couldn't have asked for it to be much better," Whitson said in his slow drawl, which seems to reach farther south than 25 minutes from Cape Girardeau. "I'm more than happy with the way I've done. I'm happy with it all."

Whitson has been the medalist at five of six tournaments he played in this year, claiming the top honor at the Poplar Bluff Invitational, Jackson Invitational and the SEMO Conference Small Schools division, before leading the Hornets to first place in the Class 1 District 1 and Class 1 Sectional meets, where he added two more individual first-place finishes.

The first two victories, at Ozark Ridge Golf Course in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, and Kimbeland Country Club in Jackson, were delivered with rounds of 2-under 68.

"He has shot some scores like that in the past," Advance coach Neil Miles said. "Him shooting a 68 is not new, but he's a lot more consistent. He's doing it a lot more often now. He's a lot more consistent with his scores. He's shooting 75 or lower on a very, very consistent basis."

The low scores are grounded in Whitson's short game, which he's been working on since the age of 3 and finely honed over the years.

An all-around athlete, Whitson has also been a sharpshooter on the basketball court for the Hornets basketball team and was a pitcher/catcher/shortstop for the varsity baseball team for two-and-half seasons before hitting a dedication crossroads with golf during his junior season.

His talents are not just confined to the athletic field, as he ranks near the top of his class and also sings in the choir.

"Brian is just an A-plus kid," said Advance superintendent Stan Seiler, who coached the golf team along with Miles in the program's first season. "You just don't get any better than him. He's a good student; he's a good athlete. Specifically, he's an outstanding young golfer, but the most important, he's just a great young man. He really is. He's very quiet, unassuming, but has been extremely successful so far in his young life. I really look forward to his successes in the future because he's just that type of kid."

Whitson has been the centerpiece of golf program, the brainchild of Miles, all four years.

Miles, a youth golf advocate who belongs to Dalhousie Golf Club, said his son, Carson, was his inspiration for wanting to start the program, and he knew Advance already could field a respectable team with the likes of then-freshmen Whitson and Lorch, and then-sophomore Grant Woodfin, who had all played junior golf.

"I knew we had a nucleus there to start with," Miles said.

He approached Seiler, a friend, with his vision of a golf team.

"I just went to him with my idea and he was all for it and supported it, and said, 'What do we need to do?'" Miles said.

The advent of a golf program was welcome news to Whitson, who had competed in youth tournaments since age 11.

"I was happy about it," Whitson said. "I didn't know what to expect. I didn't have a clue what golf practice would be like. I just always played on my own and with my dad. I didn't know what it'd be like having other people out there or where I'd practice, because at the time we didn't even know what our home was going to be."

The home-course dilemma was solved by Dalhousie, which has received national acclaim by Golf Digest and other publications and has been an active supporter for youth golf over the years, most notably hosting prominent AJGA events.

Miles, who has been a volunteer coach all four years, said the team consisted of "six or seven" players that first year. It served as a platform for Whitson to qualify individually for the state meet, where he finished 19th.

It was at the end of his freshman year that Whitson said he began to experience a significant improvement in his game, shooting par for 18 holes for the first time and qualifying for the men's Missouri Amateur, missing the cut for match play by just a few strokes.

"For a freshman, I did really good in it," Whitson said. "It brought me to, like, a new level of golf. I saw what all I could do in it and being able to step up to where I could see me doing good."

Whitson's investment in golf began to surpass his love for baseball, a sport he had played since tee-ball, including participation on traveling teams as he got older.

His sophomore golf season at Advance played out on a more individual level, as the Hornets had just three players and were unable to post team scores in tournaments. Whitson and Lorch both qualified for state individually, with the former, who was tied for the lead after the first day, grabbing all-state honors with a tie for fourth place.

With his continued growth and success on the course, Whitson stopped playing travel baseball the summer before his junior year, a harbinger of a decision in the upcoming spring.

Carson Miles finally arrived on the scene during Whitson's junior year, providing a fourth player -- a talented player to boot -- which allowed the Hornets to qualify for state as a team for the first time.

"My sophomore year, playing with three guys, it was playing against each other, you know," Whitson said. "We were competitors even though we went to the same school. It was more like fighting for a spot to get on to sectionals and then on to state. And then my junior year we knew we had Carson coming up and that would be a year for us to do something in golf, if we were going to do it, because we would have four solid players."

With Carson Miles placing 17th, Advance finished seventh at the state meet in 2015.

It was that spring that Whitson made "probably one of the harder decisions I had to make."

Advance has produced some quality baseball players over the years -- 2000 graduate Garrett Broshuis starred at Missouri before being drafted by the San Francisco Giants, and 2007 graduate Trenton Moses became two-time Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year at Southeast Missouri State and was later drafted by the Atlanta Braves -- but Whitson would not follow in their footsteps. Midway through his junior baseball season, he quit the sport.

Coincidence or not, he finished second at the state meet that spring.

But heaviness still hangs when the subject of leaving baseball behind is broached.

"All those people I grew up playing baseball with, I mean, it's kind of ... I don't know, it's just hard to explain it all," Whitson said.

He described himself as a pitcher who could throw fairly hard and locate his pitches, which included a "pretty good curveball," and believes he would have been able to continue playing somewhere at the college level.

"I wish I could have played baseball, but I think it was for the better for me to focus on golf," Whitson said. "I think I have more of a future here than there."

His play on the course during his senior season has affirmed that decision.

"Really I've just been more consistent," Whitson said. "You can't have errant shots. I've had to practice a lot more because before it was go from a baseball game one day and a golf tournament the next day and you'd be expected to shoot good, and you can't do that. Golf is a sport you have to practice at and work at every day to stay at the level you're at."

The season also has been helped by the addition of Creighton Miles, who has been an unsung hero -- he regularly posts the Hornets' highest score, but only took up the game just months ago at the request of his uncle, Neil Miles.

"I remember looking at my coach last year, and saying, 'Well what are we going to do next year, we're down to three kids,'" Neil Miles said. "So I went to Creighton and said, 'Hey, why don't you just come play golf with us.' He had played baseball all of his life, and he said, 'That'd be great.' And we started working with him a little here and there, and when March 1 started this year, at practice we hit it hard, and he's really done a wonderful job. He's done fabulous for a first-year kid."

Neil Miles said Creighton broke 100 on the fourth time he played 18 holes.

"My sophomore year I thought it was fun going out to Rivercut and playing in the state tournament and playing against everybody and going with a teammate," Whitson said. "With the whole team going to state, it's a lot different. I really like playing with a team a lot more than individually. It's a lot more fun, and I'm just thankful that Crey joined golf."

But therein lies a problem for the future of the program in a town that does not have a golf course and does not inherently breed golfers. Golfers must travel to a nine-hole course in Bloomfield or travel to 18-hole courses in Dexter or Poplar Bluff, where Whitson's family belongs to Ozark Ridge and where he first learned the game.

While coach Miles, who has been helped by volunteer assistants Marvin Whitson --Brian's dad -- and J.D. Cundiff, hasn't had the luxury of throwing out a score at competitions like opponents over the last two seasons, things could get worse.

"I don't know," Miles said when asked about next year's team. "I got one boy coming back, and I don't know. I don't know, we'll just have to see if there is any interest."

Seiler holds out hope for the unknown, noting the perks the players have received, including golf scholarships for Whitson and Lorch, who will play at Mineral Area College next season.

"My grandfather had a saying, 'The future will take care of itself,'" Seiler said. "And I just have great confidence in the future, our other kids in our school will see the benefits that the golf team brought not only to our school but these kids, and that it could benefit them as well in a lot of ways. I think through the success of the program, that future will take care of itself."

Whitson is not so optimistic. He's tried getting fellow classmates to give golf a chance but heard replies like, "It's too slow," or, "I don't have the patience."

"I'd like to see Advance continue a program, but it's just too hard in a small school like that," Whitson said. "We really struggled just continuing the program from last year. We got Carson. After Carson, there's nobody coming up. There's no little kids that play golf. So after Carson, I guess Advance will be done with golf."

That remains to be seen, as does the fate of Whitson and his three teammates over the next two days. If he holds to form, the name of a Hornet could be found at the top of the leader board at the state tournament for the first time, and quite possibly the last time.

"He's really had a great year," Neil Miles said. "He's just been consistently good. Every day. Every week. Every round. That's impressive, because golf is an up and down game. He's really had it together all year long. Hopefully he can do it one more time."