BECKER — Not many programs can claim to send a team to the state tournament for three consecutive years.

The Sleepy Eye United girls golf team is one of those few, with their top four golfers all having two years of experience at Pebble Creek Golf Club, where the Class A State Golf Tournament will be held.

“Our first year up at Pebble Creek was kind of like a slap in the face,” Meriden Andres, the lone senior on the team, said. “Because we really had no idea what to expect. We were a really young team, we didn’t have a lot of experience. It was really good to just be there and have that. So as we grew as a team, we knew what to expect and what to prepare for. Last year, we did four better. We moved up at least three placements in our scoring, which was far better than we anticipated doing.

And this year, looking at other people in the state tournament, we know where we’re kind of looking to place … I just want us to do our best. It’s been a learning thing every year, we learn a bit more, which I think is, with anything, how it should work.”

Anders said that some of the challenges that the team will face at Pebble Creek will be the increase in not only their competition but also the challenge of the course.

“It’s our competition, but also the course itself,” Anders said. “The competition is all advanced, they’ve all had to fight tooth and nail to be there, and they’re just bigger schools as well. They have more of a variety to choose from, which is, we can’t control that. But the course itself has a lot of water hazards, a lot of lateral hazards which are all out of bounds. Those are all penalty strokes and those are all things that you have to avoid. If you look at a course like Sleepy Eye, we have very few of those, so it’s a little more of an open course, tighter courses, more trees, more hazards, more things to mess with you and cost those strokes. Those are things that aren’t in this area, so it’s hard to prepare for that when you don’t have a place where you can prepare for it.”

The good news for SEU is that Anders, Sam Price, Chloe Walter and Kiara Murphy have all been to the tournament the previous two years the team has gone, meaning they should be better prepared to deal with the hazards of the course.

“I’m looking forward to playing it again,” Anders said. “I’m looking forward to doing better on it this year. I’ve looked at maps of the course and I’ve gone over it mentally over and over again. You only play it three times, once a year, and they’re all together, so it’s a bit of a refresher before that practice round. But I’m very excited to play it again and I think it will help us a lot … I think we’re all really excited to get back at it and see what we can do on this course now that we know it as well as we do.”

Price has been the leader for the team as a sophomore, putting in a 47.5 nine-hole average this season and placing first in the Section 2A Girls Golf Tournament in the past two years. Anders averages 52.8 on nine holes, and Walter a 54.1. Murphy rounds out the top four with an average of 54.2, while Ella Pollard (59.4) and Elizabeth Currans (77) will look to chip in scores from the final two spots on the team.

Anders believes that if the team hits their averages for the season, they should be in good position at the state tournament.

“I think we’d like to shoot what we average on a lot of our 18-hole meets,” she said. “I think that’s a big deal, to try to keep our head above water. It’s a hard course, so I never want my teammates to feel like I’m putting pressure on them that they don’t need, but I think we need to keep our heads above water and do the best we can. Mentality is a big part of it. As much as I want to score well, I want my teammates to enjoy themselves with this experience, because not everybody gets to have it. I think that keeping a good mental game as we play and trying to also enjoy the experience while also doing the best we can.”

Currans will be the first to tee off for SEU, starting at the 10th hole at 12:41 p.m. on June 11. She will be followed by Pollard at the 10th hole at 12:50, while Murphy will go at 12:59 from the 10th hole. Anders will start at the 10th hole at 1:17 p.m., Walter will take the 10th at 1:26 p.m. and Price will begin at the 10th hole at 1:35 p.m.

There will also be several individual golfers competing at the State Golf Tournament from the area. For the girls, Springfield’s Ava Lipetzky will be teeing off at 12:00 p.m. at the 10th hole, while Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop’s Jenna Schweiss will be teeing off at 12:08 p.m. at the 10th hole. Springfield’s Mavri Winkelmann will go at 12:16 p.m. at the 10th hole.

For the boys tournament, Ben Pearson will take his third go at the state tournament for Minnesota Valley Lutheran, teeing off at 7:54 a.m. at the first hole. Cedar Mountain’s Carson Schiller will begin on Hole 1 at 7:30 a.m., while New Ulm Cathedral’s Owen Strei takes his first crack at the tournament with Pearson at 7:54 at the first hole.