BROOKINGS – Not having played competitive golf for nearly two weeks, Aberdeen Central picked up where it left off and won another tournament on Thursday.

The Golden Eagles won the Bill Scholten Invitational with a team score of 317, nine strokes better than runner-up Mitchell.

“I was curious to see how they’d respond as a team today,” said Central coach Kim Zimmerman, “because obviously not getting in quality practices or competition for about two weeks. … We played well.”

Olivia Braun was the medalist with a one-under-par 71. The junior was a blistering four-under-par to start the day, before cooling off just a bit.

“You kind of get high expectations when you start out like that,” Zimmerman said, “but you have to maintain kind of an even keel a little bit, knowing there’s going to be bumps in the road along the way.”

While her teammates did not know about Braun’s score, it still helped to start out the day.

“It’s always nice to get off to a nice start, there’s no doubt about that,” Zimmerman said. “Kind of setting the tone and the pace for the rest of the team, even know they don’t know it, but it just makes everybody’s job a little bit easier when you have somebody going that low that quickly.”

Emma Dohrer finished third with a 78 and Kyley Wirebaugh was fifth with a 79.

“They just have really picked up their games this year,” Zimmerman said. “It’s showing in our team score, there’s no doubt about that.”

Zimmerman did notice one area where there was some rust that accumulated in the past couple of weeks.

“The one place that it kind of showed up a little bit today was around the short game area,” Zimmerman said. “It wasn’t as sharp as we’d like to be, but that’s again kind of to be expected based on, that’s something that is so much feel and touch around the green, and when you don’t do that for a while, you just kind of lose that. You can’t do that inside like you can outside.”

Central is right back in action today when it competes in a tournament in Brandon.

“(Friday) is a very important meet for obvious reasons. That’s’ where conference is going to be at Tuesday,” Zimmerman said. “We want to go out and win there’s no doubt about that, but in addition to that you want to go out and learn the golf course. … It’s a lot about learning and winning at the same time (Friday).”

Most of the Eastern South Dakota Conference schools will likely be competing in the meet, so it might be a good indication of what Tuesday will look like.

“It’s a big day (Friday) and it kind of will I think set the tone as to what the magic score might be on Tuesday, too,” Zimmerman said.

Central will head into today’s action coming off a positive day on Thursday.

“It was a good day to knock the rust off and still come out with win, and have the medalist on our team,” Zimmerman said, “so it was a good day all the way around.”

To see complete results from Thursday’s tournament, click on the following link:

https://www.golfgenius.com/pages/11671827568297806003