By RYAN ARENA
L’Observateur

LAPLACE — Riverside’s Deuce Wallace finished as second individual medalist at the Division III-District 3/4 Regional Tuesday at The Atchafalaya at Idlewild, shooting 76 to qualify to compete at the Division III state golf championship match next week.

St. Charles Catholic advanced to the regional as a team and finished sixth out of eight teams with a score of 342. Newman placed fourth with a score of 323; SCC would have needed to best that score to advance to the state match.

University won the regional with a score of 304, led by Trey Winstead’s score of 70.

Wallace’s score of 76 placed tied him for seventh overall among the 48 competitors at the regional and was, as Riverside golf coach Roy Aubert said, Wallace’s best ever score in live prep competition.

“One of the players in Deuce’s group told me he was feeding off Deuce’s enthusiasm, all of the good shots he was hitting” said Aubert. “He was really on fire.”

Wallace was Riverside’s lone representative at the regional after he qualified at last week’s district championship match. Wallace also finished as second individual medalist in that match: The top four teams qualify to advance at district and regional matches, with the players posting the best individual scores from the rest of the competition also advancing.

Aubert said that Wallace, a sophomore, did a “great job of course management” and was able to place his shots well enough to make the next easier.

“He hit the driver extremely well. His short irons were very solid,” said Aubert. “If a few things had broken right on the putting greens, he could have even lowered that 76 to a 72.”

“He really enjoyed himself out there. He’s done this in practice but this is by far the best he’s scored in competition.”

SCC, meanwhile, had the seventh best score last week of the eight competing regional teams and jumped Episcopal for sixth place Tuesday.

Cameron Torres led the Comets with a score of 81. Emile Cupit shot 84. Jacob Jenson shot 87 and Daniel Jaubert shot 90.

St. Charles coach Gary Zeringue said his players were saddened by the loss, but he credited the other teams in the field for their play. Zeringue said the regional was “extremely competitive.”

“When you’re matched with teams like University, and Parkview and Newman and Catholic, like Northlake Christian, Episcopal and Patterson … that’s an exceptional group of teams,” he said, noting that E.D. White’s top score of 324 in the other regional in Patterson Monday would have placed fifth at Tuesday’s match. “Any time you’re competing and then all of a sudden, your season is over, it hurts. It’s the same in golf as in any sport.”

Zeringue is optimistic about his team’s future prospects, given that the Comets had no seniors on the team in 2014 and will return the entire team next year.

“These guys worked extremely hard all year,” said Zeringue. “We shot 342 this year in our last match. Last year we fin-