SPENCER — Thanks to a runner-up finish at the Region II tournament held last week at Clarksburg Country Club, head coach Bubba Kendall’s Roane County golf team is heading to the state tournament for the eighth time in Raider history.

Senior Garrett Simon led the Class AA program with an 83 at the regional and was followed by 10th-grader Emerson Simons’ 86. Junior Cole Ellis and senior Bryson Watson shot respective 88s as the Raiders’ 257 total was nine strokes behind regional champ Robert C. Byrd.

“I’ve been known to switch my kids out just to get them some experience,” admitted the 19th-year head man, who noted senior JW Stover could see action on Tuesday or Wednesday at Oglebay Park’s Jones Course.

“That’s what I did last year. I told JW that I’ll probably stick with Bryson and we all got to kind of talking and Bryson said if I go up there and do horrible we’ll let JW play. That will be a spur of the moment decision. JW might be able to see some action, but for the main part of it it’s going to be Bryson.”

Like everyone else, having to deal with what was a COVID-19 pandemic, wasn’t easy.

Kendall talked about how the season was moved back two weeks, which caused havoc for not only the schedule, but also for golf courses.

“We want to play in the Callaway (Series) and we know they are going to reschedule those,” he said. “I threw out to the LKC coaches, I’m kind of the leader of the LKC coaches and try to organize all this stuff, I sent out an email to everybody.

“I asked if you all want to just scrap our schedule and start all over. The majority said let’s do that. We scrapped them and had a Zoom meeting and that was interesting. You get 12, 13 people in a Zoom meeting and they are all trying to get matches. It all kind of worked out.”

The coach noted there were some instances of the coaches having to double check to make sure they were going to the right course to play.

“I still had 17 matches. I can’t complain,” added Kendall, whose squad was fourth in the LKC. “The kids played some golf.”

On the season, Simon has a one-stroke scoring advantage over Simons, 80 to 81. Ellis has averaged an 89 while Watson is at 93.

“It looked right off the bat like it was going to be between us and Robert C. Byrd,” Kendall said of the regional. “Clarksburg Country Club is just a different animal. It’s a tight course. They had rough greens. It really wasn’t the setting we were expecting.

“It is what is is, but we only got to see it when we played one nine-hole match the Wednesday before and then we went up and played an 18-hole practice round the following Wednesday and then went up and played in on Monday. All those kids up in that region can go play that at any point in time. It’s hard for us to go play two hours away.”

Obviously, the coach was happy with the effort of his Raiders, who definitely enter the state tournament as an underdog.

“Herbert Hoover has a pretty stout team. The Bryson Beaver kid made it as a single last year,” Kendall noted. “I feel they are going to be pretty strong and North Marion is going to be pretty strong.

“They’ve taken the Marion County Cup and won the Big 10 Conference. They’ve been playing pretty well all year long.”

Simon will be the first Raider to tee off come 10:09 a.m. Tuesday on hole number one. Simons will tee off at 10:18 a.m. then nine minutes later Ellis will go with Watson going off at 10:36 a.m.

Contact Jay Bennett at jbennett@newsandsentinel.com