By Coach Liesl Roorda
We have an exciting season ahead in golf.
With the cancellation of last year’s season, we had some unfortunate events, in that our girl golfing seniors, Waverly Roorda, Mariah Seaton, and Makaela Meyer, did not get to compete and see where their years of golf dedication would have taken them.
Also, our new-to-golf athletes who were coming out, didn’t get the competition experience and coaching.
On the positive side, a number of our new-to-golf athletes took the summer and restrictions that were in place and found freedom and fun in being able to be on the golf course. They used their summer to play a lot of golf so they are coming in to this season as “new” golfers, but having spent a great amount of hours on the course having fun but also working on their game.
We return seniors Jacob Ross, Alex Cheney, and junior Connor Van Zee. These three boys saw action in and out on the varsity roster two years ago during the last competition season.
Sophomore Maguire DeJong began practicing with the team as an 8th grader but with the cancellation of last year’s season, did not get to compete as a freshman.
Others who are new to the team this year are seniors Trey Shearer and Cole Watts, juniors Eddie Burgess and Nathan Jorgensen, sophomores Owen Cook and Coleton Benson, and freshmen Jack Erselius, Cruz DeJong and Tod Geiger.
Many of these boys were planning to join the team last year and one of the freshmen planned to practice with us as an 8th grader.
We have a great boy’s roster full of competitive, fun athletes. We have already seen great strides being taken in all areas of the game and they all are very coachable.
To start the competition season, we open Monday, April 5 with a home meet against Lynnville Sully and North Mahaska.
Through qualifying rounds and practice information we are seeing a great deal of competition for the six boys varsity spots. The scores between the top 10 golfers are only 6 strokes apart so as we compete and practice we anticipate a great amount of effort and work being put in.
For Monday’s meet we are starting with the following varsity line-up:
Maguire DeJong, Eddie Burgess, Alex Cheney, Jacob Ross, Connor Van Zee and Cruz DeJong.
The JV lineup includes Jack Erselius, Trey Shearer, Cole Watts, and Owen Cook.
All of these boys will be able to post scores and from meet to meet we anticipate there will be changes in the lineup. We are excited to have this number of boys all pushing each other for spots.
On the girls side we have five girls completely new to the sport of golf and one with some experience. Madalyn Fleming, who was to be out last year and has spent some time in the off-season with family on the course, starting to learn the game.
Our new female athletes are senior Lauren Klos, junior Jade Benedict, sophomores Aislyn Hutchcraft and Sadie DeJong, and freshman Chloe Hutchcraft.
All are eager to learn the game and have been working to absorb and incorporate all the work with their swings along with learning about the course and rules of the game.
We will start the first meet with four varsity female golfers and are excited to see where their work is taking them.
The girls varsity lineup: Sadie DeJong, Lauren Klos, Chloe Hutchcraft and Aislyn Hutchcraft.
We have added a very talented coach to our staff in Randy Masterson. Randy was formerly residing at the lake and currently lives and works in Grinnell, but was very interested in being a part of our golf program.
He comes to us with experience as a golf instructor and loves the game of golf so much he refers to himself as a golf nerd.
We also are fortunate to have George Salnave continuing to volunteer coach with us as he also brings great golf knowledge and encouragement to our athletes.
