Hall’s Landen Plym, Bureau Valley’s Wyatt Novotny land in top 25 at state golf meet: BCR roundup, Oct. 19

Two of the best golfers in Illinois in the Class 1A ranks call Bureau County home.

Hall’s Landen Plym (13th) and Bureau Valley’s Wyatt Novotny (23) both landed in the top 25 of the Class 1 State Golf Meet at the end of the day on Saturday at Prairie Vista Golf Course in Bloomington.

Both felt like they played their best golf.

Plym finished out tied for 13th with a round of 75, scoring a two-day total of 151. He had started the day tied for eighth at 76.

“Even though I only scored one shot lower, I think I played a lot better than yesterday,” Plym said. “The only thing that held me back was putting. I hit a lot more greens in regulation today and overall played a better game. But for the overall tournament, my goal was top 10 and I only missed that by one shot, so I’m happy with how it went.”

Novotny finished strong, shooting an even-par 72, knocking off 13 strokes from Friday, to move up from 63rd place to 23rd after shooting an opening- day round of 85.

“Today was the complete opposite than yesterday,” he said. “Made a lot of good swings and a lot of putts and climbed up the leader board a lot, so that was great to see. This weekend was really fun and hopefully I’ll be back here next year.”

Novotny, who was making his second straight state appearance, said they had ideal weather with not much wind and perfect temperatures, which called for better scores.

Ottawa won the Class 2A State championship at ISU’s Weibring Golf Club in Normal, shooting a 609 to beat out runner-up Benton (616) by seven strokes.

BOYS SOCCER

Princeton 3, Serena 0: Chase Sims had all three goals to lead the No. 6 seeded Tigers to a 3-0 win over the host No. 4 seeded Huskers 3-0 in Saturday’s Class 1A Serena Regional semifinals.

The Tigers will play top-seeded Mendota at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday for the regional championship.

CROSS COUNTRY

At Peoria: Princeton’s Augustus Swanson finished 28th in the Patriot Invite with a time of 16:29, the best performance by a PHS boy in the Tigers’ 10 years at this meet.

Other top 100 runners were Bureau Valley’s Alexander Gallardo (87th, 17:33.3) and Maddox Moore (93rd, 17:39.1) and Hall’s Jeremy Smith (91st, 17:38.1).

The Princeton girls finished 19th of 34 full teams with 502 points, their best finish since 2019 when they finished ninth.

Ruby Acker led PHS by placing 45th in 19:58, the second-best performance by a PHS girl at this meet. PHS’ Alexandra Waca finished 86th (21:25.8) and Bureau Valley’s Gemma Moore was 94th (21:44.8).

PHS’ Brady Peach finished 36th (19:19) in the JV boys meet.