Macey Oler’s score was the first number posted to the leaderboard, and it stood up for the rest of the day to earn her medalist honors and help lift Northeastern to the Wayne County girls golf championship for the third consecutive year.
Northeastern posted a team score of 418 on a par-72 layout at Highland Lake Golf Course, which has recovered nicely from the catastrophic rainfall that hit the area earlier this month.
Hagerstown (476) slid past Centerville (483) for second place Aug. 29.
“We have a lot of new girls, including some who are brand-new to golf, so winning Wayne County, I think that gives them a lot of confidence knowing they are capable of playing well even when they are just starting out,” Oler said as her teammates took turns posing for photos with the team championship trophy outside the Highland Lake clubhouse.
Oler was part of Northeastern’s county-winning teams the past two years. This was the first time she got to wear the gold medal with the blue ribbon awarded to the county meet’s top individual finisher.
Oler recorded six pars and avoided big numbers — she was no more than two strokes over par on any hole — to finish one stroke from matching her career-best 18-hole score. Her score was the first one written on the leader board as part of the first group to finish 18 holes following the morning shotgun start. No one bettered it as the rest of the scores rolled in.
“My short game was pretty good today and that helped me a lot,” Oler said. “I cut off a lot of strokes with my chipping today.”
The Knights swept the top three spots on the individual leaderboard. Makayla Hopkins was runner-up with a 103. Hopkins quickly steadied herself after a tough opening hole and finished with a flourish with back-to-back pars on her last two holes. Baylee White was third with 108, one stroke off her career-best 18-hole score.
Hagerstown claimed two spots on the five-player all-tournament team. Layla Cool shot 109 — including the event’s third-best score on the back nine — to finish fourth. Lily Masters was fifth with a score of 114.
Lili Harvey led Centerville with a 115 and a sixth-place finish.
Final standings: Northeastern 418 (Oler 89, Hopkins 103, White 108, Boyce 118, Kircher 122); Hagerstown 476 (Abshire 118, Cool 109, Masters 114, Carrico 135, Mitchener 136); Centerville 483 (Jones 122, Harvey 115, Hemmerling 124, Gabbard 125, Hicks 122)
A version of this article appeared in the September 2 2026 print edition of the Western Wayne News.
