The fairways at the Powell Golf Club were busy on Monday morning, with the Powell High School golf team kicking off practices before hosting its invitational Wednesday and Thursday.

After a season in which the boys’ team graduated a significant number of players from its roster, the Panthers are looking to rebuild around a core of three returning state players from last year.

Those include a pair of seniors in Jackson Hill and Trey Scott who were second and third, respectively, on the team at state last year and have been varsity players all four years, alongside sophomore Cody Fisher who was fourth on the team last season.

“A really good core of experience at the top,” coach Troy Hildebrand said. “We’ll try to add a couple to that to round out our group.”

Behind them the Panthers have limited returning experience, with Hildebrand saying that  10-12 freshmen boys came out on the first day of practice.

“We have a big class of freshmen coming in,” Hildebrand said.

On the girls’ side, the Panthers return both players from last year’s team, with junior Coy Erickson returning for a third season and sophomore Emery Hernandez for her second.

Hernandez was the Panthers’ top finisher at state last year, while Erickson was close behind.

“They’ve played some this summer and have grown through their tournament experience,” Hildebrand said. “They were definitely playing their best golf at the end of the year for sure as they got settled in.”

In addition to Erickson and Hernandez, the Panthers have added two girls, freshmen Grace Gordon and Madilun Croft, to the mix to give the girls enough golfers — a minimum of three — to post a team score at the state tournament for the first time since 2018.

“Really nice to add to Coy and Emery on that side,” Hildebrand said. “I’m really happy with that addition.”

Figuring out who will be joining the three boys on the varsity team will be a difficult task to figure out with as little time as the Panthers have, as the first tournament of the season will be in Powell starting Wednesday at noon.

“It means at the beginning, figuring out who is going to be playing in the tournaments for us is happening in a day-and-a-half for me,” Hildebrand said. “With this big of a group it’s a matter of some experience, and figuring out which newcomers have enough experience on the course to play in a tournament for the first time.”

The second day of the tournament will kick off at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday.

After the first tournament, the Panthers will take some time to get their feet under them over the next week, before heading to Lander on Aug. 23 and 24 for the second tournament of the season.

“This year going Wednesday-Thursday and then Thursday-Friday is going to give us a chance to get our feet back underneath us,” Hildebrand said. “We’ll start to iron a few things out for everybody. The top end guys and ladies, they’ve played enough this summer that they know where their game is at. Some of the ones we are trying to add to the mix it will be important to find some things in their game where they can find some strokes that we might be wasting this first week.”

The shortest season of the year wraps up on Sept. 20 and 21 in Rawlins.