After bad start, 7th grader steals the show at 9th Region girls golf tournament

Sitting at plus-2 through her first two holes, Parker Haddix could have tensed up and let her round get away from her Wednesday at Lakeside Golf Course.

But Haddix, the no. 9 golfer in all-state points entering the 9th Region Championship girls golf tournament, is as determined as she is fearless. After back-to-back bogeys to start the morning, Haddix parred her next four before returning to even with birdies on 16 and 17 (the top flights started the tournament on hole 10).

She made par at the corner and the following four holes before tacking on two more birdies (Nos. 5 and 6). Haddix finished even on the final three holes to cruise into the clubhouse with the lead and before the best five flights finished their rounds. Her final score was three strokes better than anyone else’s.

“I was just frustrated; I don’t think I was really focused,” Haddix said of her start. “Then I let it all go. It’s in the past, I had to move on. I wasn’t in the tournament vibe yet, and it took a little bit for me to wake up.”

Haddix, a seventh grader playing for Lexington Catholic High School, became the Knights’ first individual girls region champ this century and may be its first ever; records immediately available from the KHSAA date back to 1999. She led a group of 10 individual qualifiers who, along with team champ Lexington Christian Academy and runner-up Madison Central, advanced to the first round of the Leachman Buick GMC Cadillac/KHSAA State Golf Tournament.

That event starts next week at three sites across the state before getting completed a week later in Bowling Green. Participants from the 9th Region will play the first round at Winchester Country Club, where Haddix just a few months ago won the Kentucky Girls Junior PGA Championship’s 13-and-under division.

“She’s played like this all year and the tougher the competition gets, the better she does,” Lexington Catholic head coach Brad Bachand said of Haddix. “She has something mentally that just separates her from a lot of the other girls.”

The 12-year-old and many of her 9th Region peers are well-positioned for a trip to Bowling Green; five of the current all-state top 10 reside in the Lexington-centric region. Three others — Frederick Douglass’ Willa Borough as well as Franklin County’s Mary Clayton Rodgers and Emerson Bowling qualified as individuals; Carter Lankford made it through as part of LCA’s winning team.

Two of Haddix’s teammates will join her at state. Georgia Scott, a senior, will play in her fourth straight tournament after also qualifying individually. She matched two others, LCA’s Grace Soale and Lankford, with the day’s second-best score (+1) but medaled fourth behind them after tournament tie-breaker procedures.

Scott thrust herself into the runner-up conversation with back-to-back birdies to close her round. She was even most of the tournament but hadn’t birdied prior to that.

“On my first birdie putt I was like, ‘I’ve been missing these all day and I am determined to make this putt,’” Scott said. “I told my coach, ‘I am walking out of here with a birdie.’ Then on the last hole, I kind of got this tunnel vision where I’m like, ‘I have to focus on this shot and nothing else.’ I don’t look at the leaderboards so I didn’t know where I was, but it just felt important.”

Ellie Fightmaster also qualified from LexCath. She shot 87, one stroke ahead of the cutline.

Lexington Christian Academy gets the team victory

LCA for the second time in three years emerged with the team title. Lankford and Soale paced the Eagles, but their next-best scorers weren’t far behind; Caroline Lankford and Piper Dunn each shot 76 (+4) to round out the top medalers.

“We think we have a really good chance to win (state), so we’re just happy to get the first level done with,” Soale said.

Teammate Elle Chamberland, whose score didn’t factor into the team total since only the top four are counted, shot +11 to finish among the top 20 placers. LCA ended with a 298 (+10) aggregate, 11 strokes better than runner-up Madison Central (+21).

“Everyone had pretty solid rounds, and that’s what you need,” said Lankford, whose sixth-place finish in last year’s state tournament was tops for LCA, which finished third as a team behind Sacred Heart and Madison Central. “No one went crazy or anything, but everyone contributed. That’s what being a good teammate is, and everybody was a good teammate today.”

Madison Central, which won last year’s region tournament, had a shaky start collectively. Mollie Neeley, the individual champ last fall, finished with a 79 (+7) after two bogeys and a double bogey through her first five holes.

“There definitely was some tension happening throughout the round, particularly the first four holes where you get to settle down and get your swing in a real decent rhythm,” Madison Central head coach Tennye Ohr said. “A lot of the girls commented that they didn’t feel the greens had any consistency, they were hot and cold, running fast and slow. But we’ve played here four times this season and as individual players they’ve played here numerous times in junior golf.

“That’s the nature of the business: this time of year, you never know what you’re gonna get.”

Neeley is one of four Madison Central seniors and the only remaining member of the Indians’ 2022 state-championship quintet. Only Rosie Patterson, a freshman, will suit up for the Indians next fall. She’ll make her state-tournament debut alongside a core that last year shot five strokes better than anyone on day one of the two-day final round in Bowling Green.

The Indians couldn’t hold the lead the following day and eventually lost to Sacred Heart by 12 strokes.

Douglass with a remarkable final cut

After just a handful of holes, Frederick Douglass freshman Candice Tanmas faced a monster climb just to stay near the top of the leaderboard.

She triple-bogeyed her first hole, bogeyed the next and then tripled again. A brief reprieve on a par-3 hole 13 was followed by disaster: she hit a ball out of bounds and then nearly did so again on no. 14 before carding a quadruple bogey on the hole. She followed that with another bogey and a double to finish +14 on the front nine.

That put Tanmas, who teed off with the penultimate leader group, at risk of not even making the state-tournament cut. But she mounted a terrific response — her 38 on the back nine was among the best scores posted for golfers who started on hole 10 — to put herself back in contention. Her fate wasn’t sealed until about 45 minutes following the completion of her round, but her final score, 88, represented the cut line.

“I wasn’t thinking about getting in or not,” Tanmas said. “I was just thinking about putting the ball in the hole and making pars.”

Two other Broncos qualified for the state tournament. Borough matched Madison Central’s Aubrey Barrow for the day’s third-best score (74). The freshman’s 35 on the back nine was bettered by only one other golfer: Haddix.

Izzy Newland, a senior, finished one stroke ahead of the cutline to qualify for her first state tournament since she was in seventh grade. It’s her first at Douglass; she was part of LCA’s region-title winner in 2020.

“Don’t go in with any expectations and just stay in the present the whole time,” Newland said when asked how the Broncos should approach the next week. “Don’t think about what other people are shooting or if you’re gonna qualify. Don’t think about it until the end, whenever you see it on the scoreboard.”

The remaining state qualifiers hailed from outside Lexington. Franklin County will field three — Mary Clayton Rodgers, Emerson Bowling and Lyla Hardesty — and Woodford County got one through with Abigail Caine, who matched the 38 put up on the back nine by Tanmas to finish strong.

Girls 9th Region Championship

At par-72 Lakeside Golf Course, Lexington

Top 10 teams (top two advance to state tournament): 1. Lexington Christian Academy +10; 2. Madison Central +21; 3. Lexington Catholic +33; 4. Franklin County +47; 5. Frederick Douglass +50; 6. Woodford County +75; 7. Great Crossing +123; 8. Model +130; 9. Paul Laurence Dunbar +134; 10. George Rogers Clark +137.

Top 10 scores: 1. Parker Haddix, LexCath, -2; t2. Grace Soale, LCA, +1; t2. Carter Lankford, LCA, +1; t2. Georgia Scott, LexCath, +1; t5. Aubrey Barrow, Madison Central, +2; t5. Willa Borough, +2; 7. Mary Clayton Rodgers, Franklin Co., +3; t8. Piper Dunn, LCA, +4; t8. Caroline Lankford, LCA, +4; t10. Emerson Bowling, Franklin Co., +6; t10. Rosie Patterson, Madison Central, +6; t10. Mackenzie Federspiel, Madison Central, +6.

This story was originally published September 25, 2025 at 5:30 AM.