By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — Salisbury’s Isabella Rusher and Grace Yatawara and South Rowan’s Alexandria Bare have moved on to college golf, so there really was no one to push Carson’s Micah Furr during her senior season.
But Furr is the sort of person who can demand a great deal of herself, and she didn’t relax. She pushed herself, and the result was a stellar fall for the Rowan County Golfer of the Year for girls.
“Alex Bare and all those great golfers Salisbury had are gone now, so I was kind of playing against myself in the Rowan County Championships,” Furr said. “I knew bogeys would be good enough to win, but I pushed myself to try to make pars and birdies.”
Furr’s 81 at the Country Club of Salisbury in October’s county tournament was good enough to lap the field by 17 strokes. She was so dominant relative to the competition that she propelled Carson to an unexpected team championship when teammates Kaiya Addison and Sophia Brown came through with better than anticipated scores.
“East Rowan had been beating us in all the regular matches,” Furr said. “So that was a surprising day, a very good day.”
Carson golf coach Ryan Chandler watched Furr become the school’s first conference champion in 2015 and the school’s first county champion this fall. This year’s team title also was a first for his program.
“Micah has been a lot of fun to coach,” Chandler said. “Always pushing herself to be the best she can be, and she was a good leader for a young team. If she had a bad shot or a bad hole, she did a great job of moving past it.”
When Furr was at Erwin Middle School, her favorite sport was basketball. She was one of the leaders for the Eagles in scoring and steals. She also was good at softball.
“I was interested in track, too, but then I got started in golf,” Furr said. “I never had very high expectations for myself as a golfer. I never dreamed things would go as well as they did.”
Furr attended Gray Stone Day School her freshman year. Her golf game blossomed enough that she helped the Knights finish fifth in the 2013 1A/2A State Championships at Longleaf Golf and Country Club in Southern Pines.
Before her sophomore year, Furr transferred to Carson and qualified for her first 3A state tournament as an individual.
Her junior year was the breakout. Furr’s season peaked with a career-best 76 in the South Piedmont Conference Tournament at Warrior Golf Club. That shining moment allowed her to come from behind and win the SPC’s season championship.
Much was expected of Furr as a senior. She lived up to the hype.
First, she was on the winning team in the prestigious Labor Day Four-Ball Tournament, helping teammate Allison Dupree Adams extend her winning streak to six straight titles. There was some pressure involved, as Furr was replacing Yatawara as Adams’ partner.
“Allison was my middle school basketball coach, and she’s always given me a lot of support,” Furr said. “It was wonderful to be able to help her keep her streak.”
Besides winning the county tournament, Furr also repeated as SPC Player of the Year in a relative breeze — by 11 strokes.
In the nine-hole conference matches, she had a best of 35 at Warrior.
She shot 81 at Warrior in the 18-hole SPC Tournament, which serves as the season finale. She finished second that day, but she easily maintained her overall lead for in the season competition.
In one seven-day stretch in mid-October, Furr clinched the SPC title, was crowned Carson’s homecoming queen, took the county tournament (individual and team) and shot 82 at Greensboro National for seventh place in the 3A Central Regional to qualify for her fourth state tournament.
“Now that was a week,” Furr said with a laugh. “I’ll never forget it.”
Furr’s fourth state tournament was her strongest. She was back at Longleaf and fired 86-83 — 169 to tie for 13th in 3A.
“At states I was playing in a group a really great player (Chapel Hill High’s Gina Kim, who has committed to Duke),” Furr said. “I set a goal for myself to beat her on one hole — just one hole. But I played well, and I actually beat her on four or five. That was a really big deal for me in my last high school match.”
Furr is an exceptionally bright student headed to N.C. State, so she has no plans to play competitive golf in college.
“But golf is a lifetime sport and I’m still hoping to play in a lot of Labor Day tournaments,” Furr said. “Promoting women’s golf and girls golf is something I always want to be involved in. I know girls golf declined a little bit in Rowan County this year, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.”
Furr is competing now for Carson’s basketball team. She’s a reserve on a 9-2 team, but when the Cougars need a 3-pointer against a zone defense or a boxout on the defensive boards, she’s someone coach Brooke Misenheimer can always count on.
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West Rowan senior Ella Ferguson, who earned a spot on the all-county team with her play in the county tournament, lost her life in an accident in early November. When the golfers gathered at Catawba for the all-county photo shoot, she was foremost in the thoughts of girls she had competed against.
West Rowan athletic director Todd Bell brought Ferguson’s clubs and a Falcon blue wreath to the all-county gathering.
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Despite finishing second to Carson in the county tournament, East Rowan has four all-county golfers — sophomores Camryn Corriher, Carmen Fraley and Hailey Fesperman and senior Micah Loper.
Corriher finished eighth in the final SPC standings and was the highest Rowan finisher other than Furr. Fraley just started playing golf this year, so she has a ton of potential. She was runner-up in the county tournament with a 98 and shot 92 in the SPC Tournament.
Rounding out the all-county team are South Rowan junior Ellyse Scarborough and Carson freshman Kaiya Addison, who helped the Cougars win the team title.