COLORADO SPRINGS– What a magical couple of days it has been for the Erie Tigers.

On Monday, they served notice to the rest of the Class 4A field that the state tournament belonged to them and they left little doubt.

So how did Brandon Bird and his girls — notably senior Logan Hale — rest up and get ready for Tuesday at the Country Club of Colorado?

They drove up to Denver for Bird to do the Erie Tigers Network broadcast of the state championship boys lacrosse game — that the Tigers won — and Hale got to see he boyfriend Liam Conners lift the trophy after a 14-6 victory over Northfield.

Hale and the Tigers lifted their own trophy on Tuesday evening, winning their third straight 4A title and doing so in record setting fashion. The Tigers placed three girls — Hale, Hadley Ashton and Taylor Hale — in the top five and won the team title by an astounding 60 shots over second place Holy Family.

It was a fitting end to a rollercoaster ride of a season for Erie head coach Brandon Bird.

“I don’t know what to say other than I feel really lucky, and I know in golf there is an element of luck, but how I feel is, is that in in the right place at the right time,” said Bird, whose two day total was an nifty 19-over score of 460 on the difficult layout at the base of Cheyenne Mountain. “I’m surrounded by great kids, all of whom I’ve had in the classroom, so I just feel lucky.”

The Tigers were never challenged. Not by the course, the elements — there was a slight weather delay at the tail end of the round — or the field for that matter.

“I think there was some uncertainty as to what would happen this year, but it turned out the way that I dreamed it would,” said Bird, who wondered if Hale and Ashton might even play in the state tournament after trying to qualify for the state four-ball tournament that would have conflicted with state. They both barely missed the cut.

“And looking back to the end of last year, I knew that if we got one more shot with these girls that we could really do something special. They really showed out.”

At the head of the class was Hale, who entered the final round with a commanding eight shot lead after a brilliant 67 on Monday. And despite a 4-over par round of 75 on Tuesday, Hale still doubled her margin of victory, winning by 16 shots over Windsor’s Macy Kleve — who had the round of the day, shooting a 1-over 72 — and Ashton

Bird was impressed.

“She just has this innate ability to really show up when the lights are on, and part of that is her background of being a competitive skier and bringing that to this sport,” he said. “She didn’t have the greatest practice round the day before the tournament and we talked at dinner that night and she just told me she just doesn’t want to think too much out there. And I told her that was a great plan.

“She was pretty clear headed. She didn’t think about the wind or any of the other things and she went out and executed each shot. And everything that was affecting everyone else out here, she was impervious to and I’ve never really seen anything like that coaching golf.”

In stark contrast to her six birdie first round, Hale didn’t have a single one on Tuesday. But she did have an eagle on the par-5 No. 2 that backed up an early bogey on the first.

Holy Family rallied for second place. The Tigers trailed Steamboat Springs by two to start the day and that lead grew to as much as 10 early in the round, but the Sailors couldn’t hold on and Holy Family steadied the ship down the stretch to hold them off by six shots to bring home some hardware.

—

4A girls golf results

PLACE ATHLETE SCHOOL SCORE
1 Logan Hale Erie E
2 Macy Kleve Windsor +16
2 Hadley Ashton Erie +16
4 Makena Thayer Battle Mountain +17
5 Taylor Hale Erie +18
6 Sofia Contreras Pueblo Central +21
6 Zoe Bar-Or Littleton +21
8 Kaitlyn Grommeck Steamboat Springs +22
9 Olivia Meyering Ponderosa +23
10 Steffi Heitz Holy Family +26

Top Teams

PLACE SCHOOL SCORE
1 Erie 460
2 Holy Family 520
3 Steamboat Springs 526
4 Windsor 540
5 Lutheran 547