Varsity girls golf places seventh in the Lady Mustang tournament

Photo courtesy of Ryan Maine

Sophomore Sophie Lu hits a drive, going 260 yards. “In the beginning, my drive only went up to like 200 yards,” Lu said. Halfway through the game, I changed my grip which got my [drive] to go 260 yards which lowered my score a lot so I played much better.”

Varsity girls golf took seventh place in the Division 1 and 2 annual Lady Mustang tournament Monday, Sept. 18 at the California Country Club.

The team scored 394 strokes altogether. Junior Chloe Cheng placed 14th, shooting 74, and sophomores Jackie Li and Kaylin Rhee placed 24th and 31st, shooting 76 and 78, in individual strokes out of 114 players. 

“Before the tournament, I was feeling a little anxious. I [played] kind of bad in the first few holes but over time I got better,” junior Kyrie Padero said. “But after the tournament, I was relieved that it finished and I did pretty well on it. I think no matter how bad your game can get, just keep being hopeful because maybe it’ll get better.”

The tournament hosted schools from around the area, including Arcadia, Notre Dame and Harvard Westlake. Bishop Gorman from Las Vegas also participated this year along with the Southern California schools.

“I thought we were going to take home the win but not all of us were present,” Li said. “We didn’t do as well as we expected. We will definitely do better next time though because we learned from a lot of our mistakes. I was a little frustrated, but in the end, it turned out alright —not the best but it’s acceptable.”

Though golf is an individual sport, the results were scored by stroke play; the teams would count every stroke they took to get the ball into the hole. The top five of six players on each team’s scores are added up and submitted for scoring.

“I definitely could have shaved a lot more strokes off of my round if I had given myself a better opportunity to make putts,” Cheng said. “I need to improve on that, but you know, golf is always a game of improvement.”

This was the second of two Lady Mustang tournaments this year; the other was three weeks ago where they placed first among 14 teams. This annual tournament also acts as a fundraiser for the team. They raised four thousand dollars cumulatively, a tenth of what they needed for the season. 

“Golf, unlike other schools, does not have practice facilities,” coach Cecil Woods said. “The school district provides fields for all the other sports. They provide gyms and are building a second gym for basketball, volleyball and badminton. Football has its own field. Softball has its own field they’ve been using only 12 times a year. We have nothing [at school] so we have to fundraise to pay for the golf courses.” 

There were 20 teams present in the tournament. Each school had around two teams competing in the tournament, but teams with less than six people were not scored since it would be unfair to the other teams. Walnut’s second team consisted of only three people, so they were not scored but were still able to experience playing an 18-hole tournament beside other high school teams.

“I’m proud of my team for all the hard work they [have] done to play well,” Cheng said. “Obviously, not every tournament or every match is going to be good, but as long as we try our best, [then] that’s what’s most important.”