WILLIAMSTOWN — The Williamstown Yellowjackets are back, and this time, they’re going to the state golf tournament in Wheeling as a team. While team captain Xavier Caruthers returns for his third trip to the Jones Course at Oglebay, that’s where most of the team’s experience at that level ends. The battle-tested ‘Jackets had to go through a region rich with teams that gave them a tough time previously. Defending Class A champion St. Marys took home the win, but Williamstown came in right behind them to punch their tickets.

Head coach Rich Siley talked about his team and how making it through a region which included the Blue Devils and LKC champs in Ritchie County prepared them for this moment.

“(Caruthers) has been playing pretty well. He went 2-under in the regional. That helped us there, and we got a big surprise from Baylor Haught, who is our No. 3,” Siley said. “He shot a 77 at regionals, which really put us in the runner-up position. Our No. 2, Gavin Bosgraf didn’t shoot as well as he could have but he shot well enough. My No. 4 is freshman William Barniak, and if he does what he’s capable of this week, we ought to be in contention.”

Williamstown enters the frey with plenty of other team’s looking to be in contention, and Siley knows to set his team apart from the rest, it will take top-tier efforts from everyone involved. Given the caliber of teams they just faced. The ‘Jackets are prepping for another tall task on Tuesday.

“That’s a pretty tough region we just came out of,” Siley said of the competition. “There were four teams that really probably should be at the state tournament, and it’s kind of what I call a ‘mini state tournament’ at our regional. We had to play very well to even make it out of our regional, because Ritchie County and Wheeling Central are very stout. Playing the type of schedule that we’ve played, and the kind of courses we played, have really set us up well for Wheeling. The boys and I both think we’re going to go up there and compete pretty well.”

This is WHS’s first appearance as a team in Wheeling in two years, but the expectations set for the Jones Course show that the Yellowjackets are ready to make an impact.

“This is Xavier’s third trip to the state tournament. He’s gone as an individual, and then the team went his sophomore year, and Xavier and William both played the Jones Course at Oglebay quite a bit on the Callaway tour,” he said. “They’re very familiar with it. It’s a course that can jump up and get you with the fast greens and the fairways being a little harder this week, since we haven’t had much rain. You’re gonna have some hard fairways, and that tough at a course like Oglebay.”

For Siley’s bunch, he says it’s all about the team playing to its fullest potential. While experience varies between golfer to golfer, the team has already been tested to the extreme. Battling through teams in a region not for the faint of heart gives Williamstown an edge, and Siley echoes that sentiment with the big stage looming large.

“We had to look at the fact that St. Marys is your defending state champ,” he said. “They’ve got two guys back that are really, really good. We thought if we could hang with them and Ritchie county, who also has a pretty solid lineup, that we could be in the thick of things in the region, but we happened to sneak into that second position.”

Contact Josh Hughes at jhughes@newsandsentinel.com