On Friday, Aug. 8, Viera High’s boys golf team was presented with state championship rings for their 2024 Class 3A state championship win.
Last November, the Hawks topped the competition at the Class 3A meet with a total 591, finishing ahead of second place Lakewood Ranch and Ponte Vedra, who placed third.
Now, with a little over a week until the 2025 season begins, the Hawks received state championship rings to commemorate the outstanding end to their 2024 season.
“This has been something I’ve been chasing for over 30 years, so to have the kids pull that off is tremendous,” Viera head coach Paul Bentley said. “It’s worth all the hours of being out there and working with the kids and making sure their grades are good and all that kind of stuff. So to see them reach the pinnacle of golf for high school is perfect.”
For Bentley, the strong point of the team in 2024 was how well the players knew each other and worked together with a roster filled with talent.
“You could tell that they’ve been playing golf together for a long time, so they’re real good friends. There wasn’t this like, ‘who’s this person, is he going to take my spot’, they fed on each other to get better,” Bentley said. “They’ve been playing golf together, most of them, for seven, eight years. We got a couple kids that moved in and they were phenomenal players and it worked out where we had a good base.”
The 2025 high school golf season is set to begin on Monday, Aug. 18, and the Hawks will look to defend their state title at the end of the season.
Bentley says the team returns a good number of golfers and the experience of competing for and winning a state championship will be beneficial for the Hawks this season.
“It makes them feel like, ‘hey we did it before. All we got to do is take care of our own selves and all we got to do is play our own game,'” Bentley said.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Viera High boys golf team receives championship rings for 2024 Class 3A state title
Reporting by Chasite Banks, Florida Today / Florida Today
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
