As the school year comes to an end, spring sports are also beginning to wrap up their seasons. One sport that is ending strong is boys golf.
Junior Caden Deardurff spoke highly of the season, looking back on connections and positive interactions. Deardurff started playing golf at age five or six, but had to drop it as he got older and picked up new sports. However, in his sophomore year, he picked it back up and played mainly for fun before deciding to join the team this year. He expresses the positives of being on the team, such as a very loose team hierarchy.
“A big positive is that there’s no specific varsity and junior varsity, or even C team, we … do a match-by-match format. Everybody practices together, and it’s pretty integrated,” he said. He also explained that, even with very faint team separations, all grades practice together and blend well.
“It’s really nice because it’s just this team environment and every round is always with a group of four people, so you always get to hang with different people while practicing,” he said.
Head JV coach and upper school administrative assistant, Laurel Ward, added to this. She highlighted that the players have thoroughly enjoyed their seasons and that they have all improved as the season progressed. She shouted out junior captain Quentin Sentz and eighth-grader Jackson Geiger, two varsity medalists this season.
“The nice thing with varsity and JV is that they practice pretty much on the same schedule … It’s been really fun for our JV [players] to learn a lot from our varsity [players] when we’re playing in practice and doing competitions,” Ward said. Cooperation and community have been important for boys golf, especially because of the abundance of middle schoolers on the team this year. Ward expressed great appreciation for the connections the boys golf team has made between grades across this season.
Junior Quentin Sentz is the captain of the boys golf team. He grew up around golf and started to get more involved with it around sixth grade. One of the biggest draws of golf for Sentz is the independence it offers. “I like how independent you are … It’s almost just like you and your thoughts out there for two to four hours,” he said. The independence of golf has been an important part of both his progression in the sport and his life outside of athletics, tying back to school and his decision-making.
As a captain, Sentz has also enjoyed observing the cross-grade connections that are made through golf. These manifest in ways like greeting each other and making conversation in the hallways and practicing with mixed-grade groups. He is hopeful and excited to continue leading as a captain in this space for connections again next year.
As the season rounds out in the final weeks of classes, boys golf proves itself to be a strong, community-building ecosystem, fostering connections across grades and personality types. Boys golf team competed in their conference championship meet on Monday, May 18.
