As one ages, it”s always good to experience new situations in sports, ones that allow you to learn as well as to help you reassess your assumptions. My new golf coaching experience occurred this past Monday at Santa Rosa”s Oakmont Golf Club, a 36-hole complex in the Valley of the Moon that hosted the North Coast Section Girls” Golf Championship.
I have coached boys” golf in the spring for close to three decades, but because of the limited number of golf-playing girls at Kelseyville High School and the other 21 small schools that make up the Coastal Mountain Conference, there is no autumn golf in the CMC. This past year was the high-water mark in league as two girls, Lisa Copeland of Middletown High School, and my daughter, Liz Berry of Kelseyville High School, played on their respective boys” varsity golf teams. Lisa was No. 2 at Middletown and Liz was No. 6 at Kelseyville.
Copeland, who is a bonafide Division I prospect and came in third at the NCGA Junior this past summer, and Berry, who prioritizes basketball over golf, were eligible to represent the CMC in girls” golf as individuals. We had a qualifier for CMC girls at Adams Springs several weeks ago. The two girls were the only ones entered, so obviously both qualified, and the next thing I knew, Liz and I were playing practice rounds at Oakmont East on Sunday afternoon, were going down to Hidden Valley Lake to practice on its range, and were putting in time hitting lob wedges over the soccer goals at Mountain Vista, all in readiness for her first NCS girls” sectional.
Monday morning rolled around, and Lisa and Liz were the first two golfers on Oakmont”s fog-shrouded range. The tourney was set up like the boys” sectional except that usually there are about 120 boys in the field whereas there were 64 girl contestants. The low four teams and the low 12 individuals not associated with the low four teams would advance to the TOC.
I headed out to my marshaling assignment on the 15th hole. I had number-three golfers from Piedmont, Redwood, Ursuline and the Bay School. I quickly learned that not all number-three golfers are created equal. By the end of the day, the girls in my group would shoot 86, 102, 106 and 114. The girl who shot 102 would do so by carding a 43 on the front nine with an eagle, and a 59 on the back with a 10 and a pair of eights.
There were plus and minus difference in comparing boys” golf with girls” golf. On the different side, the girls never played honors. Peyton was the girl who made the eagle-two and received warm hugs from the other girls in her group, but when they played the next hole she inexplicably teed of third. Yet when she made a 10 on one of the holes, she led off on the next tee.
The girls took multiple practice swings, which led to multiple divots. With boys, I hassle them right away about taking needles divots, especially on a par-3 tee box. With the girls, I winced at the practice. After about six holes, I finally spoke up and chided them for excessive divots. Sophie laughed and said “girls like to play dirty golf.” I didn”t ask for an explanation.
Sophie, who was the most consistent of the golfers after posting a matching pair of 57s for a 114 total, was the most eccentric member of the group. Based on how she was playing, she continuously altered her hairstyle. She went from wearing her hair in a bun, to a ponytail, to pigtails, to not tied up at all. She explained that if she hit a good shot, she”d leave her hair as is, but whenever she hit a poor shot, she would need to change her hairstyle before the next shot. Thank goodness she only did this for full shots and didn”t extend the practice to short game play and putting.
There was a lot of accidental getting too far ahead or walking in putting lines, and yet all four girls were very patient with each other. It almost seemed as if they were silently relieved to play golf with other girls their age and had found a certain peace of mind on the golf course that they didn”t experience when playing with boys or adults. Maybe because teenage girls are a decided minority group on the golf course, they seemed to take great relief in being around each other.
Of course, I don”t want you to think it was non-competitive. The obvious leader of the Branson High School team excitedly did the scoreboard watching and gleefully informed her coach and teammates that they had won by four shots when the final score of runner-up McKinleyville had been posted, long before the team totals were added up.
As for Lisa Copeland, it was another growing day in the development of a local talent. Lisa was the best known of the girl golfers and she seemed to know most of the other girls from summer tournaments. She shot 71 and was the low individual. This coming Monday, she plays on the longer and harder Oakmont West at the Tournament of Champions. She has the 1A shotgun start pairing alongside Alameda”s Grace Na, the 30th-ranked junior in America who was runner-up in the women”s flight of the San Francisco City Amateur, and Monte Vista”s Jordan Ontiveros, who shot a 6-under-par 66 at Tony Lema in the San Leandro Fall Classic. Lisa will need a top-four finish against 128 other golfers to advance to the NorCals at Corral de Tierra in Monterey County.
Liz Berry was irritated on the ride home to Kelseyville. She had missed advancing by four shots, had bunker problems on No. 9 and an out-of-bounds shot by inches on the 10th hole. Her overall feeling was that she should have shot 85 and easily qualified. It sounded like the basketball Liz talking instead of the golfing Liz. She said she needed a new driver, she needed to avoid the sand, and she figured she”d get to the TOC next year. The intensity and the futuristic planning were music to my ears. Liz had a bonafide golfing golf for next year.
All I had to do was find her the right driver for a Christmas present.
