The final teams and individuals from the Upper and Lower state Qualifying Tournaments are spending the weekend tuning up their games for the state championships.

One Classification held its championship last week as Chesnee won the South Carolina High School League AA Championship.’

Starting on Monday AAAAA schools will compete at Holly Tree Country Club in Simpsonville, the AAAA teams will hold its championship at The Golf Course at Hilton Head Lakes, and AAA schools will be at the Hackler Course at Coastal Carolina to crown its champion.

Scores turned in by the qualifying teams at the Upper and Lower state tournaments are difficult to use to handicap the field. Different courses and different playing conditions make comparing scores interesting, but not necessarily predictive.

Dorman was the last school, not in the Columbia area to win the big school championship. Click here to see our coverage of the 2015 championship which included medalist Natalie Srinivasan who, went on to star at Furman and win the ANNIKA award as the national college player of the year.

The top teams in the AAAAA Upper state turned in significantly lower scores than their competitors in the Lower state.

Only Carolina Forest’s score would have qualified if it had been posted among Upstate scores.

Dorman finished on top of the AAAAA Upstate tournament shooting a 298 total while Carolina Forest shot a 335 total to lead Lower State qualifiers.

Different programs approach qualifying in different ways. Some want to win to build momentum while others just want to make sure they simply qualify.

Pickens was the top AAAA team in the upstate shooting a 334. May River posted a 329 total in the Lower state and is the AAAA championship host team.

Myrtle Beach’s Madison Messimer is the defending AAAA individual champion and shot an 8-under par 64 in the Lower state qualifier.

The Seahawk golfer won the Carolinas Women’s Amateur and the Women’s South Carolina Junior championship during the summer.

No individual in the Upper state event shot under 70.

AAA Championship

In the AAA championship illness has created problems in the lineup of the top three Upstate teams at various times during the season

At the Upper state Seneca and Daniel were missing players. Blue Ridge, which battled illness earlier in the year was able to finish on top in the Upstate with Seneca and Daniel right behind.

In the Lower state both Aynor and Waccamaw shot scores that would put the two teams in the mix with the top three upstate teams.