Several years ago the PGA Tour ran commercials promoting the talents of the members of the Senior Tour. The catch phrase that ran throughout the ads was “These guys are good.” After my last few weeks of being up close and personal inside the world of women’s high school golf and women’s junior college golf, I have to rephrase that line to include “These women are really good.”
Just more than two weeks ago I ran the North Coast Section Division II Women’s Golf Championship at Rooster Run Golf Course in Petaluma. I have some degree of familiarity with this group of golfers as I have been the tournament director for four NCS golf championships since 2010. The Rooster Run field included 100 girls. The girls were either part of a league championship team or were individuals who qualified into the tournament. I had my usual contingent of helpful volunteers who served as rules officials, pace-of-play marshals, and forecaddies. They included Clearlake’s Jack Lucich of the NCGA and Web.com Tour, Ted Nelson of Rincon Valley Christian, Russ Peterich of Montgomery, Mike Armstrong of Sacred Heart, Bill Kleinecke of St. Vincent de Paul, Mike Kalbfleish of Geyserville, and Bob Norris and Geri Giovanetti of Middletown. All of us have worked together on girls as well as boys championships, and the day went off without a hitch.
The eye-popping player that day was Ty Akabane of San Ramon Valley High School. I noticed Ty early on as I watched her drive the 290-yard par-4 13th hole at Rooster. Often power players have something lacking in some other aspect of their games such as wedge play or putting, but such was not the case with Ty. She shot a 4-under-par 68. She said she’s not sure where she’s going to go for college, which makes some degree of sense since she just turned 16 years old and is only a junior. On the team front, St. Patrick-St. Vincent High School of Vallejo eked out a one-stroke overall team victory over McKinleyville High School. When you consider team scores on based on the low four scores out of a team of six golfers, the St. Patrick-St. Vincent victory was by the thinnest of margins. One stroke comes down to a chip-in or a ball bouncing over sand.
The girls advanced to play in the Tournament of Champions the following Monday at Chardonnay Golf Club in Napa. The cream continued to rise to the top as East Bay powerhouse Dougherty Valley High School won by 15 strokes over neighboring Carondelet. The amazing thing about the Dougherty Valley win was that its team score of 360 means the five girls averaged rounds of 72. Belinda Hu shot 69, Danieele Suh carded a 70, and Amy Xue and Jacqueline Ha posted even-par 72s. Their fifth golfer, Sammy Lee, could have shot a 91 and they still would have won, but instead she carded a 77. That’s pretty heady stuff for the fifth-best player on a girls’ high school team competing on a course that is considered a tough test. Yealimi Neh of Carondelet had the low round of the day with a 68, Corrine Tan of Alameda shot 70, and Division II champ Ty Akabane shot a 71 to join the rest at NorCals the following week.
This past Monday and Tuesday I moved outside of my comfort zone and worked the NorCal Junior College Women’s Golf Championship at Butte Creek Country Club in Chico. I have never been to a junior college tournament let alone worked at one, but the California Community College Athletic Association must have been minimally desperate as I was hired on to serve as a rules official and scoreboard operator. I was in a familiar environment as Jack Lucich was one of the rules official sat Butte Creek along with Jerry Hallock of Sacramento.
The NorCals at Butte Creek turned out to be a fun experience for me. It was a solidly run tournament. Emeritus professional Mike Mattingly of Butte Creek served as the tournament director as well as the women’s coach of the host school, Butte College of Oroville. Mattingly is a class act, a pro’s pro, and has obviously had a lot of experience in the realm of running big-time golf tournaments. Mattingly ran a super-smooth event. Butte College Athletic Director Craig Rigsbee also was a big presence at the junior college championship. As an aside, Rigsbee is the former high school teammate of Adams Springs staff member Casey Cates, former college roommate of Middletown High School football coach Bill Foltmer, and is best known as the coach of Green Bay Packer star quarterback Aaron Rodgers when he played at Butte.
The junior college women had loads of talent and you could see future Division I golfers walking the fairways of Butte Creek. Nao Bando of Sierra College had the short game of Phil Mickelson, the putting stroke of Ben Crenshaw, and shot 74 on Monday and 2-under-par 70 on Tuesday for a 144 total and medalist honors. Her second-round score of 70 was enhanced when she holed out a 90-yard wedge on Butte’s testy par-4, 350-yard dogleg right fourth hole for an eagle-two. Sierra College of Roseville ran away with the tournament and advanced to this week’s State Championship in Morro Bay along with Modesto College, Fresno City College and Canada College of San Mateo.
The most interesting team from my perspective included two young women from Sacramento City College. Ciera Hoag and Hunter Hoag play on the Sac City team. They are both freshmen. They are twins. They are both 5-foot-1. Their dad is a teaching professional and serves on the Sac City coaching staff. They both have rock-solid swings and really go after the ball. They both shot the same scores on Monday. They have identical ponytails. Yet they are not completely identical as Ciera swings from the right side and Hunter hits it from the left side.
One of the players I watched closely was Haley Vandenberg of Sierra College. On day one, I was monitoring the par-5 10th hole. Haley’s tee shot probably traveled close to 290 yards in the air and rolled out another 25 yards. She had an 8-iron left into the green, which she promptly hit long and to the right. Oh well, in golf you can’t be brilliant all the time. Nonetheless, she is an integral member of a very good team and is heading to the state finals.
I spent a 15-day period of time helping run women’s golf tournaments on the high school and the collegiate level. I continue to marvel at the way the game has grown with the increase of young women during the last few decades. And yes, those girls and women are really, really good. On top of that, I kept hearing the same two words on a very regular basis. The contestants seemed happy, not grim. They were smiling. They kept saying “thank you.”
