Girls’ Golf Season Begins With Winning Every Match

The fall girls’ golf season is in full swing here at MBHS, with their first match on Sept. 9, already smashing the scoreboards with their first win of the season at Dairy Creek. During preseason, which started in early July till the beginning of September, the team won every single scrimmage they played. Coach Mimi Black, a returning girls’ golf coach who’s been with the team since last year’s season, was also welcomed alongside two new coaches, Coach Louise Booth and Coach Kristine Lautrup. 

Preseason brought enough people to have a large varsity team and junior varsity team, which the team had not had before this season. Practice has been essential for the golf team to stay on top of prioritizing playing well. “I practice on the weekends a lot with other players on the team,” said one of the varsity captains, senior Beatrice Appel, who just won the medalist title with the score of 50, her personal best, at the Dairy Creek match against 36 players. Varsity player and junior Peighton Lopez shot a 55 at Dairy Creek, her personal best, and senior Haley Hart shot a 59, yet another great score. The team practices four times a week for nearly two hours each time, ensuring that they continue to grow their skills.

While the season begins, so does another year of the girls’ tight-knit friendships with one another. “We have gotten to know each other over the years, have seen a lot of phases of each other’s lives, and stuck with each other through that,” said Appel. Since the team is constantly in such tight quarters with one another, and when they work well together, they bring that energy right to the course. “It helps to have a close community of people that you can smile at when you pass them by in a scrimmage, and they build each other up, and it helps make our players more confident,” said Appel. 

Golf is an extremely mental sport, and in order to score low, the team has to be constantly in tune with their emotions. “Our girls are really working together,” said Lopez. “It’s you against the course, and not really you against one individual; it’s very mental.” The team has noticed that other schools’ teams tend to get caught up in the game, and attempt to overthrow that path, “We are competitive, but not to a point where we care so much about it,” said Appel, “we’ve seen in other teams that they are so competitive that they are mean to each other, and it messes with their heads.” 

Although competitiveness is common in most sports teams, their coach, Mimi Black, is immensely caring about the team. “Coach Mimi is very motivating for us, and she’s so sweet, and just wants us to do our best,” said varsity player and senior, Ashley Beltrama, “however badly we do, she still motivates us and is appreciative of us.” Within the last three years, the team has nearly doubled in size. Junior and varsity player, Coco Fortini said, “My freshman year, we only had 4 girls on the [varsity] team,” Fortini said. And soon enough, the team had expanded to include eight girls on the varsity team, eight on junior varsity, with the practice team merging and combining into junior varsity.

As the team takes a glance into the future of this season, they can’t wait to continue to bond with their teammates, as well as absolutely crush the other teams that play at matches. “ “[Wednesday, Sept. 3] we beat our team by almost 50 strokes,” said Beltrama. Last year, at the same match, the team shot over 300 strokes, and they have since narrowed it down to around 280, proving their methods of staying in the game. With the team’s attitude, spirit, consistency of practice, and pure determination to win, they are sure to go far this season.