Girls golf kicks off this year’s fall athletic season with the golf team finally making their comeback. Removed five years ago, many athletes hoped for this news; finally, girls and boys golf are returning to Oxford Academy, playing in the fall and spring respectively with ten players of all levels led by Coach David Vosskuhler.
“We’ve got a couple players who’ve been playing for a while and are pretty good and play competitively in tournaments. Then we have some girls who have played for a little while but haven’t played for a while [since then]. Then [there’s] some girls who are brand new to the sport.” Vosskuhler said. “Golf is all about repetition, the more you practice the better you’re going to get, so that’s kind of the plan for the first year: we’re all learning.”
Coach Vosskuhler, who is in his first year of coaching, focuses on being supportive and encouraging so that the players have fun on the field and improve their golf.
“It helps to see I’m very much a beginner. It helps me see the growth from the first day of practice to now, but it’s good to see that I’m getting better and better each time I play,” senior Megan Dang said.
The team kicks off with three team captains: junior Leia Luna, junior Melody Oh and senior Ashley Chen. Ashley Chen’s golf journey began with her uncle, a golf professional. This year, she looks forward to becoming a “bogey player,” which means that she goes one stroke over par. A stroke is a swing in golf, and par is the number of strokes expected to complete a hole.
“[Because] it’s an individual sport, it’s always about yourself. My motivation is to see how well I play for the day and see how I can deduct my score and challenge myself,” Chen said.
Although the team has a long way to go, everyone has made improvements, whether it’s from the farther range strokes to the closer putting. The athletes’ hard work with Coach Vosskuhler’s instructive guidance particularly showed during their win against Whitney on Sept. 14.
“The goal is to have other girls in future years join the team so we can grow, be bigger, and eventually have a Varsity and a JV [team] like these other schools do,” Vosskuhler. “The goal is just to build in, get more kids, and play better.”
