Newton girls finish second at Cardinal Invitational

Johana Cerna birdied the very first hole of her 2025 season, Addie Ratcliff needed just one nine-hole meet to set a new career-best score and the Newton girls golf team finished second at the Cardinal Invitational on Thursday.

Cerna, a foreign exchange student from the Czech Republic, led the Cardinals in her first high school tournament in the United States and Newton shot 188 in its season opener at Westwood Golf Course.

“I’m extremely happy with how we played for our first meet out,” Newton head girls golf coach Nicole George said. “I wanted to shoot under 200 as a team, and we crushed that. A lot of these teams have played two or even three meets already so it was awesome to see us earn the second-place spot.”

Norwalk won the tournament with a 171. The Warriors placed three in the top four and four in the first six and all seven golfers were in the first 13 positions.

The Cardinals edged Williamsburg (190) and Dallas Center-Grimes (191) for second and the rest of the seven-team field included Pella (197), PCM (215) and Chariton (232).

Norwalk’s Evelyn Kinney and Cerna both shot 41s at the top of the leaderboard.

Kinney won medalist honors after a card back, but Cerna was the runner-up medalist and Addie Ratcliff posted a career-best score of 47 in a tie for 10th place.

Eva Pak and Evie Main tied for 18th place with 50s, Kalleigh Berndt tied for 20th with a non-counting and career-best 51 and Addie Hook shot a non-counting 53.

“It was a great showing by (Cerna) with her first golf meet in the United States — just barely missing out on meet medalist,” George said. “If we can shoot like this this early in the season with unpredictable Iowa weather, we should be able to be pretty competitive the rest of the year.”

PCM was led by Emilyn Davis. She was part of the tie for 20th with Berndt with a 51.

Gretchen Uitermarkt (53), Seriah Nolin (54) and Brelee Berger (57) had the other counting scores, while Annie Ford (59) and Kayla VanderLinden (61) turned in non-counting scores.

The Mustangs were missing senior Meredith Chipps, who was at the state FFA Convention all week.

The tournament issued medals to the top five finishers. After Kinney and Cerna were Norwalk’s Allison Soukup (42), Norwalk’s Addie Smith (43) and Williamsburg’s Ruby Allison (45), who won a card back in fifth.

Notes: The tournament featured a few different weather situations, including a short period of heavy rain. … Cerna played her first high school meet in Iowa in the team’s No. 6 position.