Experienced Trojan golfers look to postseason

Girls high school golf season can be gone in the blink of an eye. Five weeks is all that separates the first week of match play and the conference tournament. For Park Hill golf coach Tari Garner, it’s been a season that has gone by almost too quickly as she’s coaching one of the most talented teams she’s seen in recent years. The Trojans feature two state qualifiers from a year ago, Anna Kloeppel and Stephanie Atkinson, along with Bailey Warlan, Sam Brunker, and Erica Crainshaw. All are returning varsity players from last year.

“We’ve got a great group of girls with great attitude,” Garner said. “It’s gone so fast.”

After catching up with the team last week during a match with Staley, Garner talked about how she is seeing signs of the team peaking at the right time.

“We’re seeing a tremendous drop (in scores) right now which is telling us we’re doing something right,” Garner said. “On average, we’re in the 80’s and we started in the 90’s.”

While the Trojan golfers have seen their scores drop, Garner hoped a lot of the kinks some were experiencing would be worked out with some practice days the team has coming up.

“I don’t know if it’s pressure or if they have to work more on the range,” Garner said. “I think what we need to do is back off and let them figure it out on their own. We’ll have time this week before conference.”

“I think we know our practice levels need to come up and focus needs to get a lot better,” Kloeppel said.

“I’m trying to not worry as much this year because last year we put a lot of pressure on ourselves,” Crainshaw said.

Of course, the short season has been a long time in the making with this group making it a habit of playing and working throughout the summer to come into the season as prepared as possible.

“We worked like crazy this summer and would always have at least one day a week in the summer where we could all work together in addition to our individual time,” Crainshaw said.

“I definitely practiced more this year than in the past,” Kloeppel added.

Although an individual sport, these Park Hill golfers have found improving individually helped their teammates as well, whether it is in practice or getting through a bad round.

“We know what our strengths and weaknesses are, so when we have time we spend it working on those things,” Crainshaw said. “We all build off each other.”

“We all try to help each other so if one of us struggles one day we try to get them through it,” Kloeppel said. “I think when you see one person getting better it motivates you to get better too.”

The conference tournament is this Monday with the district tournament the following week.