CAMARILLO WON'T BACK DOWN.

Byline: DAVE SHELBURNE Golf

Camarillo High golf coach Bill Dowden had just seen his four-time Pacific View League-champion Scorpions complete the best season in the school's girls' golf history: a third-place finish in Monday's CIF/WSCGA championship that is the closest Southern California high school players get to a state final.

Dowden loved the effort and the result, but the Camarillo coach has high goals, which probably is a big part of the reason the Camarillo girls have been ranked No. 1 all season by the Daily News and the school has produced one of the area's most successful golf programs in boys' or girls' competition for several years.

``We were the leaders in the clubhouse, until those other nine teams posted their scores,'' Dowden said, laughing, after the 10-team, four-section event at SCGA Members Club.

At that, the Scorpions finished just 26 shots shy of winner Peninsula while fielding a team with only two seniors in the starting lineup.

``The bottom line is, we're a solid team for not having any major tournament players,'' Dowden said of the Scorpions, who went 17-0 in the regular season, placed fourth in the Southern Section final and then improved to third at CIF/WSCGA with no players who have any experience in prestigious American Junior Golf Association tournaments - the major league of junior golf.

``I'm real proud of our girls,'' he said. ``They play tough, and they hang tough.''

Dowden will lose only seniors Alanna Silvertrust, who has accepted a scholarship offer from Kentucky, and Southern Section individual finalist Kim Jenkins, who will play next season at Cal State Monterey Bay.

The rest will be back, likely on another Camarillo charge to league and postseason accomplishment.

--Dynamite addition: When Soo Ji Cho enrolled at Glendale High as a freshman last year, soon after arriving from Korea, she could speak little English and couldn't even play on the Dynamiters' girls' golf team - since Glendale didn't field a girls' golf team.

No problem. Kim played on the boys' team last spring and did well enough to play as No. 3. When the Southern Section girls' golf season resumed this fall, Glendale still had no team. Again, no problem for Cho, who wound up contending for section and CIF/WSCGA titles after qualifying as an individual on the basis of scoring average.

She shot 75 two weeks ago in the section final at Mission Lakes Country Club in Desert Hot Springs, where she was even-par through 15 holes in a competition won in a playoff at 71.

Monday at SCGA Members Club, Cho came even closer with another 75 in a tournament won at 73. She included an eagle in that CIF/WSCGA competition, which brings together the best players from the Southern, City, Central and San Diego sections of the California Interscholastic Federation.

In both championships, Cho was hurt by trouble in the stretch: a bogey, double-bogey finish at the section final, then a lipped-out birdie attempt resulting in a bogey on her 17th hole at CIF/WSCGA, where the birdie would have put her in a playoff for the championship.

No problem.

``Nothing really bothers her,'' Glendale coach Bob Francis said of his long-hitting 10th-grader. ``When she hits a bad shot, she comes right back with a better one to get back on track. On one hole, she hit behind trees and then into them but still made bogey. She knows how to manage her game.''

With no girls' golf team set for the immediate future at Glendale, how will Cho manage competing again on longer courses with the boys' team?

``She'll be our No. 1 player,'' Francis said.

--They'll be back: Granada Hills coach Steve Thompson had hoped his Highlanders - competing in only their second season of girls' golf at the school - could break 400 in their second CIF/WSCGA appearance Monday, and perhaps even finish ahead of a team from another section after placing last in 2001.

He settled for a little progress and a lot of satisfaction at the conclusion of a season that produced the school's second consecutive City Section championship and a ninth-place finish at the 10-team CIF/WSCGA match, where sophomore Alyson Golditch shot 93 to lead a 425 effort for Granada Hills.

``We had a great year, a terrific year,'' said Thompson, who had only one senior on a team led by Golditch and junior Lucy Davies, who was third in the City final at 79. ``We were 95 shots better in the City final, we shot 51 better here. We didn't break 400, but that'll come. We just need a little bit more time, a little bit more practice.''

--Patriot games: This year's City Section championship at Balboa Golf Course capped an outstanding week for past and present Birmingham of Lake Balboa golf standouts Min Hee and Jee Hee Hwang. Jee Hee, a senior, won her second consecutive individual City title, holding off former champion Maria Lamela of Carson by a stroke in a 77-78 duel. Two days before that City final, Min Hee helped Mt. San Antonio College win the state community college championship.

It also made for a nice going-away present for Patriots coach Chick Epstein, who will retire next month after four decades at Birmingham. Epstein, who got his golf-coaching start when boys' golf was introduced as a City sport in the early 1960s, coached Birmingham's first girls' team, led by the Hwang sisters, to the inaugural City team title in 2000 and coached the individual City champ in Jee Hee the past two finals.