IRON RIVER – Manistique’s Macy Green was a really good softball player before she switched to golf full time just last year.

Teammate Nora Cunningham has been playing for a couple of years, and she won a few tournaments this season.

“And they’ve been highly competitive with each other all year,” their coach, Tim Noble, said.

The juniors carried that friendly competition through to the Upper Peninsula Division 2 Final at Young’s Golf Course on Wednesday. They were within a stroke of each other – at the top of the leaderboard. Green was medalist with a 102, and Cunningham shot a 103 to tie for second with Bark River-Harris’ Hannah Larson.

Cunningham said her back nine was OK, but she struggled on the front. “So that was a bummer, but I’m happy that Macy did what she did,” she said. “She really pulled through and did great.”

Green golfed with the No. 2 golfers, and she didn’t expect to win from there.

“It’s kind of shocking, honestly,” she said. 

She said she improved a lot this year, and the same was true of her day Wednesday.

“I struggled a lot with drives the first nine holes, but in the back, I improved a lot. I think that’s what helped,” Green said.

Ceara LaBlanc of Brimley was fourth with a 106, and Pickford’s Isa Franklin was fifth with a 107. 

The Munising girls won the team title with a score of 454. West Iron County was second at 469.

Logan Peters led the Mustangs with a 108, which was good for seventh overall.

Munising has four seniors who have been playing since they were freshmen.

“They’ve been improving year by year,” Munising coach Bette Immel said. “This year they wanted to come out and win it. We came in second place last year. So they thought now with senior leadership we would be able to do it, and we were fortunate to be able to come out today with the win.”

The sun and perfectly blue skies were a constant on the challenging course Wednesday.

“It was extremely long,” Immel said. “The greens were freshly cut this morning, so the kids said it was hard to land a ball on them, and putting was real tough. A little windy but not too bad. But definitely the putting was the difference today, I believe.”

Cunningham wasn’t arguing about the greens.

“The greens are very hard to get used to,” she said. “And there’s woods, and there’s water. But the greens are definitely one of the most challenging of the courses that we played this year.”

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PHOTOS (Top) Munising’s Jenna Matson tees off on the first hole during Wednesday’s U.P. Division 2 Final at Young’s Golf Course. (Middle) Manistique’s Macy Green tees off at No. 17 on the way to winning the individual championship. (Photos by Jason Juno.)