WATERSMEET — Big Bay de Noc’s girls golf team has finished runner-up the past three years at the Upper Peninsula Division 3 Final. 

First, the Black Bears finished second to a Cedarville team in the last season of a three-year championship run. Then the last two years, they took second behind traditional U.P. power Ontonagon.

Wednesday, it was finally their turn.

Big Bay de Noc won at Lac Vieux Desert Golf Course in Watersmeet, breezing past the second-place Gladiators 475-532 to win its first Finals title since 2005.

“Ontonagon’s been a great golf team,” Big Bay de Noc coach Alex Ranguette said. “They’ve actually beaten us the past two years for U.P. Finals, so it feels good to finally get one.”

The Black Bears did it with four golfers placing among the top 10 compared to two for Ontonagon. Junior Payton Pederson placed second with a 108, senior Caragan Thill tied for third with a 110, eighth grader Ivy Gates carded a 121 to finish seventh and another eighth grader, Karlee Kuehl, was 10th with a 136.

“The girls came out, started slow,” Ranguette said. “It was a little shaky to begin with, but they really turned it around. I got five girls — two eighth graders this year that just joined who have been very strong for me, two seniors who have been wonderful all year, a junior who placed second. My senior Carrigan placed third.”

Pederson and Thill alternated as Big Bay de Noc’s lowest-scoring golfer all year. 

“They both shot well,” Ranguette said. “They just played unreal. They started slow, but they held it together and it was pretty awesome to watch them finish strong.”

Ontonagon graduated important seniors last year, but so did his team. Ranguette said it then came down to the younger golfers – and the results speak for themselves.

“I was fortunate enough to have two young kids that really played well,” he said.

The Gladiators, of course, still went home with a couple of trophies. Besides the runner-up hardware, junior Summer Stites repeated as a U.P. champion.

She shot a 103, which was five strokes better than Pederson.

“It’s exciting, it’s fun,” Stites said. 

She was expected to win this year after being a bit of a surprise winner emerging from a strong competition with her own teammates last year.

“I feel like there’s more pressure on me to play better than I did last year. But I didn’t meet that goal,” said Stites, who won with a 98 a year ago.

Ontonagon coach Jim Jessup is excited she has a chance to make it a three-peat.

“She deserves it, she works really hard,” he said. “She’s improved, unfortunately not to where she wants to be, but she can play really well. We have some more stuff to work on. We got another year for her, so we can do a three-peat, if we’re lucky, if she keeps working on it.”

PHOTOS (Top) Big Bay de Noc’s Caragan Thill lines up a putt during the Upper Peninsula Division 3 Final on Wednesday. (Middle) Ontonagon’s Summer Stites follows her shot. (Photos by Jason Juno.)