One championship is a start. Two make a trend. And three mark a dynasty.
The Newport High golf programs spent the better part of a decade slowly gaining strength, like a tornado bearing down flat ground. The wait has paid off handsomely the past three years, all of which have ended with the Tigers holding the NHIAA Division IV plaque and making plans to continue their reign.
Newport’s Oct. 6 championship victory at Waukewan Golf Club in West Center Harbor came about the way the Tigers’ two previous wins did. Newport entered with one or two exceptional golfers at the top of the lineup backed by younger players who’d grown in ability and confidence through the summer and fall.
“Coming into today, I told them my goal was 330. We finished with 336,” first-year Newport coach George Campbell noted after the victory. “Somebody else’s course, I’m very pleased. It just means they played to what their potential was.”
In running the table with a perfect 24-0 record, Newport did everything everyone expected.
The Tigers started the season led by senior Cameron Gebo, who’d come within an incorrect scorecard of taking former teammate Dawson Campbell to extra holes at the 2015 individual final. Like many recent Tigers, Gebo had worked his way through Newport Golf Club’s junior ranks and put himself in a leadership position for Newport’s latest title charge.
Gebo had a senior-heavy spine of Brandon Whalen, Darren O’Connor and Bryce Turner on which to lean. Adding juniors Gabe Edwards and Kyle Fish and freshman Hayden Patten gave the Tigers plenty of depth for Division IV’s play-six, score-four matches during the regular season.
Newport scored in the low to mid-170s during most nine-hole matches, dipping into the 160s on four occasions. Division IV never had a chance: Only Mascenic, on Sept. 26, managed to get within single strokes of the Tigers, and that was when Newport posted its highest score of the season.
Waukewan was also no contest. Newport’s team 336 was more than 20 strokes beyond runner-up Moultonborough. Three Tigers — Gebo, Edwards and Whalen — advanced to the individual finals 48 hours later, and Gebo (77-83—160) walked away with that title, on the first sudden-death playoff hole, for an appropriate conclusion to his high school career.
The problem with dynasties is they must end sometime. Campbell said at the finals that he may need to get on the recruiting trail and work toward getting more middle schoolers on the golf course.
That’s for later. Now that winter has closed the courses, Newport can keep warm with the recollections of three years at the top of its league.
“It’s one of those memories where, five or six years from, you’ll look back and say, ‘Wow, that is pretty special that I played for three championships in a row,’ ” Campbell said. “In any sport.”
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.