Girls’ golf surpasses expectations, aims for CCS

October 29, 2019 — by Kevin Sze and Alex Wang

The team finished second in their league and have made CCS.

The girls golf team made CCS after finishing fifth place at the league tournament with a total score of 427.

Sophomore Savannah Lin led the team with an 81 for 18 holes (the girls usually play nine during the season). Senior Sally Kim shot 83, senior Alice Lin shot 85, and senior Nikita Pawar rounded out the group with a 95 and senior Mita Kongetira rounded out the group with a 98.

The team will travel to Laguna Seca Golf Ranch on Oct. 29 for the CCS tournament and looked to make NorCals for the first time in many years. (The Falcon could not cover this match in its print edition due to printing deadlines.)

“The team is practicing really hard,” head coach Dave Gragnola said. “We weren’t even sure if we could make the league tournament at the beginning of the year, so I’m extremely proud of the girls surpassing all expectations.”

The girls dropped their last two matches of the season to the Palo Alto Vikings 190-229 on Oct. 15 and the Mountain View Spartans, who beat the Falcons 207-229 on Oct. 16 after going 7-1 in their first eight games. 

Despite these two setbacks, the girls finished second in their league. After many hours putting and hitting balls on the driving range, the girls began to see progress from August until now.

“We practiced really hard and accomplished a lot of our goals this season,” senior Sally Kim said. “We thought we were going to go 5-5 at best, so we’re really happy with our season overall.”

Losing top player Janelle Jin to graduation last spring presented a significant challenge. Jin had been the No. 1 player for all four years of her high school career and is now playing college golf at Amherst College. 

Despite losing Jin, the team was able to band together.

“We’re really proud that we were able to go 7-3 without Janelle,” Lin said. “Obviously having Janelle would have helped, but I felt like our chemistry was really good this year and we really pushed each other to get better.”

With their sights set on CCS, the girls look to keep their own expectations in check and continue working hard. 

“We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves,” Kim said. “We’ve been practicing a lot these last few days, and we’re just going to keep our head down and try our best at CCS.”

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