After recently wrapping up its second undefeated Cape Fear Valley Conference championship, the Union Pines golf team is poised to make a run at the 3A Mid-East Regional Monday in Asheboro at Pinewood Country Club.

Led by CFVC 2011 coach of the year Alan Cox, the Vikings hope to qualify for the state finals this season after narrowly missing out at last season’s regional, contested in Burlington.

“It feels really good to perform like we did again in conference play to win the league title,” said Cox. “We have had strong leadership from our seniors. They have been leading the conference as well as leading the team by setting the precedence of what we need to do on the course and at practice.

“Last year we missed qualifying by three strokes but we return all of our players back from that team.”

Union Pines seniors Connor Reilly, Jake Sauer and Brandon Mawyer each earned all-conference honors by finishing in the top-12 of the CFVC individual standings.

Reilly finished as the league runner-up for a second straight year.

Mawyer placed third for the Vikings, while Sauer finished fourth. Also making the all-conference team for Union Pines was junior Ethan Harris and sophomore Cody Roberts, tying for sixth-place overall.

Today the Vikes will hit the course at Pinewood for a practice round. According to Cox, the Vikings' team score totals have been dropping precipitously over the past four weeks.

“All of these players have worked hard from last season till now to get to this point,” Cox said, “and each of them understands they have to play their best in every match. If somebody happens to not have a good round, another of the guys seems to always pick him up by posting a strong number that makes us shoot a low score.

“Over the past month we have gotten back to form and our scores have dropped as a result every week. At the start of this season, we were going low. Then we had a hiccup for a couple of matches but these past four weeks we have gotten back to form shooting 312, 308 and 304 in our last three events.”

The 3A Mid-East Regional golf tournament begins Monday with 8 a.m. through 9:50 a.m. tee times starting on holes No. 1 and No. 10.

Contact F.W. Manning II at frankwm@gmail.com.