The Aberdeen Central golf tournament is not a long shot for the Class AA state golf title. In fact, the Golden Eagles might just be the odds-on favorite.

But the handful of underclassmen that comprise the formidable Golden Eagle roster is taking nothing for granted.

Central enters the state tournament on the heels of one of the more dominant seasons in school history behind the consistently torrid play of juniors Olivia Braun, Emma Dohrer and Chloe Vikander and sophomore Kyley Wirebaugh.

That, said Central coach Kim Zimmerman, was a product of a consistently methodical approach to the season.

“We take the regular season just one week at a time,” he said, “just looking at our meets and going to those meets. Then we focus on our conference tournament, and now that’s behind us and now our attention is at the state tournament.”

This year’s tournament will tee off at Prairie Green Golf Course in Sioux Falls where teams will play two full rounds over two days to determine podium finishes.

“We’ve been very fortunate this year to have a lot of success during our regular season and obviously our conference tournament (doing) as well as we did,” Zimmerman said. “We’re really looking forward to getting down to Sioux Falls and competing and seeing what we can do on that course against some good golf teams and some good individuals.”

But for all that success – the Golden Eagles set new team records for low scores this season, while Braun dipped into the 60s on multiple occasions – Central will not rest on past results.

“It’s kind of a new season,” Zimmerman said. “I think a lot of teams really don’t care. They know what we did during the regular season, there’s no doubt about that. They know the scores that we posted and things like that, but they’re going to go out and do the best that they can. They’re going to compete just like we will. From our standpoint, the success that we had, I think it can build confidence moving forward to the state meet, but at the same time we can’t rest on what we’ve accomplished thus far. … We still have to go out and perform come (today) and Tuesday.”

One of those teams in the field that doesn’t care about Central’s season of success is the Kernels of Mitchell.

“We’re not taking any team for granted, especially Mitchell,” Zimmerman said. “It’s no secret that Mitchell is going to be our toughest opponent down there. I’m not overlooking or slighting any other teams by any means, but it’s no secret that either us or them have been first or second pretty much all year. We need to have two good rounds from – it doesn’t have to be our top four but we need four good scores both days in order for us to be in contention and to do well. That’s just the way it is. It’s not a secret to us or anybody else.”

The keys to doing that are two-fold: consistency and fortitude. And Central has been talking about both of those things all season long.

“Some of our girls have really performed well this year,” Zimmerman said. They’ve been consistent in the scores that they posted. That’s what you like to see. As a coach, you don’t really want to go into meets not knowing, ‘Is it going to be a good day or bad? For the most part throughout the year we’ve had pretty consistent scores.”

And what begets consistency? Fortitude.

“You just have to be really mentally tough in post-season,” Zimmerman said. “I always tell the girls there’s going to be some adversity. It can come in any form but you’re going to have to battle that. How you handle that is important.”

Central tees off all six of its golfers, in the first six groups of the day starting at 8 a.m.