As the season comes to a close, the girls varsity golf team has completed their two most important matches of the season: conference championships and regionals.
Conferences took place on Friday, September 30th at Thornapple Point, where the team took sixth with an overall score of 398. Regionals were held on Tuesday, October 4th at Arrowhead Golf Course, and the team secured the tenth spot.
In order to prepare the athletes for their conference match, head coach Jim Haveman tried to instill a new level of intelligence in his golfers so that they could play more successfully.
“A lot of times some of our big matches are at difficult golf courses where they have a lot of trouble,” Haveman said. “I always want to make sure my athletes are learning to play smarter.”
Senior Carly Southard has played since her freshman year. This season, to prepare for the conference match, Southard and her teammates played non-stop.
“There’s four [matches the week before conferences], which is a lot for one week,” Southard said. “We’ve just been playing as much as possible, even with the bad weather.”
Leading up to conferences, Southard was playing the best golf of her season. The team had previously won the Russ Johnson tournament, a large match for schools across West Michigan, with Southard coming in second.
At conferences she shot a 91, which led her to place 15th. She earned an All-Conference Honorable Mention for her performance.
Teammate and senior Natalie Boynton shot a 100 at conferences. Though she is upset about the closing of her last high school season, she is grateful for the opportunity and team.
“[I feel] sad, because it’s fun to golf with all my friends of course,” Boynton said. “And we had Mr. [Jim] Haveman as a new coach this year, which was fun to experience.”
While this is Haveman’s first year coaching golf at the high school, he had coached both Coopersville’s boys junior varsity team and Godwin Heights’ girls varsity team. These experiences have helped Haveman to appreciate Northview’s attitude.
“They have a good bond with one another and they seem to get along very well,” Haveman said. “They’re always really positive and they let the bad shots just roll off their back, not getting too stressed about it. And that I hadn’t experienced before at Godwin heights.”
