The golf team this year is filled with new players ready for a challenge and old players who are ready to come back stronger than they were last year. Head Coach Brian Bernier says that with being the fifteenth seed out of fifteenth last year, their main goal is “trying to get in that top ten.”

This year the girl’s golf team faces a new challenge since being placed in division one with Xavier.

Xavier has won 25 out of the last 26 state championships, and Bernier says that with new players, “you never know who’s gonna step up.” There’s always a possibility that with the newfound talent, they could come out an underdog.

The girls in this year’s team is composed of five returning and three new players which left four open spots that the team could’ve taken if more people were to tryout. Junior Delaney McDugle said that “with the [older players] we will have a really good chance of doing well this year. They’ve been practicing really hard over this summer”. This is Delaney’s first year on the golf team.

Returning junior Dakotah Kreil said that going to state last year was an “amazing experience being able] to represent our school [and] being surrounded by some of the best players in state.”

As for the new players, “the hardest part is trying to stay calm because even when we have a bad swing we can’t focus on that you have to keep going on to the next one.”

Kreil, confirms that the “Hardest part of golf is being patient…and sticking with it.”

However being placed in Xavier’s division is mediocre compared to the sweltering heat during Arizona’s almost five month long summer. Bernier says that there were a few practices where they had to “cut it short because they looked like they were about to not make it.”

For their first week of competitions, they play two 18 holes and two nine holes, which will be interesting for the team because they’ve “never had to come in with that many [matches] that early. So it will be interesting to see how [we] react to it.” Bernier says.