By Steve Derderian
sderderian@massgolf.org
BERNARDSTON, Massachusetts (August 19, 2025) – You don’t understand the New England Junior Amateur by just looking at final scores. Not when it’s held at Crumpin-Fox: remote, woodsy, and a little rough around the edges, where the golf is only one thread in something larger.
It’s the van rides winding through the hills just south of the Vermont line. Shirt colors are drawn at random. Trivia nights get loud and testy. Dinners stretch into conversations that can outlast some of the rounds played. And somewhere in the middle of it all, the best junior golfers in New England get one last stretch of summer doing what they love before school pulls them in another direction.
Even as North Chery (East Haven, CT) and Maddie Smith (Westford, MA) faded late after dominant starts, both still found a way to finish with an individual title, proof that a title doesn’t need to be spotless to matter. Especially not here. And when it was over, they stood side by side with their teammates, each holding matching silver plates, individual champions, team winners, and part of something bigger than themselves.
As awards were handed out, Mass Golf’s Assistant Director of Rules & Competitions, Greg Howell, reminded the crowd to applaud not just the players, but the parents and guardians who make weeks like this possible, the ones who drive, support, and show up, especially in the final stretch of summer. That, too, is part of what makes this event what it is.
View this post on Instagram
Smith not only found herself on familiar ground Tuesday at Crumpin-Fox but also a familiar situation.
After matching 73s in Monday’s opening rounds, the New England Women’s Amateur and Mass Girls’ Junior champion struggled to find her rhythm. Birdie chances came and went, and her final-round 80 left the door wide open. Playing alongside U.S. Girls’ Junior participant Jun Xi Guo, of Connecticut, the pressure never let up.
“I didn’t hit the ball that great on the third day,” Smith said. “I was having a hard time grinding today, so I think it was the resilience.”
Their final hole of regulation, Hole 1 in the shotgun format, brought the tension to a head. Guo fired her approach inside five feet and dropped the birdie putt with a fist pump. Smith answered with par.
View this post on Instagram
That left her in a three-way playoff at 10-over with Guo and New Hampshire’s Mady Savary. Playing into the tricky 18th green with a water hazard and front bunker lurking, Savary’s approach found the water and eliminated her from contention. Smith and Guo both came up short but chipped to inside four feet and saved par.
They returned to the 18th tee, similar to how the New England Women’s Amateur played out earlier this summer at Haverhill Golf & Country Club. That one took three trips. This time, it only took two.
Facing the 18th green again, Guo’s approach sailed long into the fescue behind the green. It took two shots to escape. Smith, steady and composed, got a fortuitous bounce from the front rough onto the putting surface and was able to make one last routine par to win.
“It’s just one shot at a time,” she said. “You tend to get worried about the outcome. [Coach] Jared [Winiarz] did a great job telling me, ‘Don’t worry about the outcome of the shot, because you can still make the putt.’”
The win adds to an already impressive summer, but for Smith, this one held extra meaning. It also helped redeem a narrow one-shot team loss from the year before.
“I like a lot of things in my game right now, and it’s pretty good for my confidence to get some wins this summer,” Smith said.
“Last year, it came down to the wire, and I didn’t play my best round on the last day and we up short by a shot,” she said. “I’m really happy the team pulled it out this year. Winning a team title is just as good as an individual title, if not better.”
On the boys’ side, it was North Chery who made headlines early. The soon-to-be DePaul freshman fired a course-record 62 in Monday’s second round: a near-flawless showing that gave him a commanding lead heading into Tuesday. It came at just the right time in the form of his junior finale.
“It’s my first stroke-play victory in a long time, so it’s awesome to come here,” said Chery, who also won the Connecticut Junior Amateur (stroke play & match play) earlier this summer. “It’s a really good tournament and a really good field.”
Tuesday’s round didn’t carry the same smooth rhythm. Chery pieced together a 78 with just one birdie, leaving the door cracked. Most of the field was similar stuck in gear Tuesday. However, Zac Georgantas (Foxboro, MA), who started the day nine shots back, tried to make things interesting with a late string of birdies on holes 14, 16, and 18 for an even-par 72. But Chery’s cushion, built on that record-setting round, held.
“I feel like this course is gettable if you can get off the tee,” Chery said. “There’s a lot of demanding tee shots, especially [setting a record] in your second 18 holes of the day when you’re really tired and you have to do a perfect fade, perfect draw over and over again. Tee shots were good, wedges were amazing, and I only had 24 putts.”
The win capped a strong summer for Chery. He missed his U.S. Junior Amateur qualifier due to a fractured thumb but earned a spot anyway after winning the Connecticut Junior — a tournament where he’d finished runner-up the year before.
Chery’s performance also helped power Connecticut to a runaway win in the team standings — one more piece of hardware in a week full of them.
Visit MassGolf.org and follow @PlayMassGolf on Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube for the latest information on Mass Golf championships and events. To join the conversation, use the hashtag #MassGolf.
