By: David Gurney
The South Brunswick High School girls golf team and coach Joe Dougherty take everything very hard.
The wins, the losses, the low scores, the high scores.
It’s that vision of excellence and expectation of victory that keeps the competitive drive alive in each member.
Which is why, despite falling to a state powers Hunterdon Central and Peddie the past week, while beating Bridgewater-Raritan on Monday, the Vikings are taking each loss harder. And they aren’t satisfied with decent scores and progress.
"It’s unbelievable, these girls all want to be good at golf," Dougherty said. "They’ve had some good scores, but they aren’t happy unless they hit their goals. They all want to be good, the whole team wants to be good. They’re all willing to do what it takes to get to that level."
SB (7-3) got to that level Monday in a 190-205 win over Bridgewater at Bunker Hill. Sophomore Autumn Yun paced the squad with a 45, while sophomore Tatiana Kim and junior Lupe Perez followed with a 47 and 48, respectively.
Junior Meghan Jackson was the fourth in the top unit, registering a 50, better than three of Bridgewater’s top four scorers.
The Vikings battled a hard course and fast greens to put up another great team score and ending SB’s short-lived-two match losing streak.
"There were some difficult elements today, the course was hard and greens were fast," Dougherty said. "It was a different kind of challenge. But anytime we shoot around a 190, it’s better than 95 percent of the teams that play golf in the state."
The win was a nice response following a 197-226 loss at Peddie last Saturday. Yun again led the way with a 50, while sophomore Samantha Chromey finished close behind with a 52. Perez finished third on the team with a 57 while Jackson rounded out the top four with a 61 on Peddie’s par 37 course.
But it wasn’t enough against a squad that boasted four scores of 13-over par or lower.
"There were some girls that should have played better and some of the girls were just putting too much pressure on themselves," Dougherty said. "Golf is how you respond to the pressure and circumstances. You just have to have positive thoughts, go through your routine and focus. We just needed some 45’s to stay close to Peddie and it didn’t happen."
It’s a lack of focus that has gotten to Dougherty and the rest of the team. He feels the girls get caught up with looking ahead and scores rather than the hole, a problem that could be attributed to youth, considering the team doesn’t have a senior on the squad.
"You could call it growing pains, but my thought process is, I need them to put as many of them where they’re playing golf under pressure," Dougherty said. "Sometimes the girls know what the other team is going to shoot and that pressure component is off. The girls know that when we play these teams, like Hunterdon Central and Peddie, the pressure is on. We’ve handled the pressure fairly well, but we have to address ourselves and not external things."
One player who has handled pressure well this year has been Perez, whose development has been a pleasant surprise for Dougherty and the Vikings.
"She’s a golfer," Dougherty said. "She’s golfed in tournaments, she looks for tournaments. She says she is the bulldog, she wants the pressure, wants to be out with the first group."
The key for the Vikings is having that mentality spill onto the rest of the squad. Another key, according to Dougherty, is staying true to routine and attempting each shot the same way, the same focus and attention consistently throughout the match.
"Good shooters have a routine and block everything else out," Dougherty said. "Go through your routine, bend your knees, don’t think about the impact that shot or swing has on the greater things. They can’t worry about triple bogeying or making a mistake, they just have to focus on the positives and hitting a shot."
