After losing former senior golf stars Delaney Shah and Jordan Weitz to graduation, the golf team will look to rebound after a successful season last year.
This year, James Long, with help from assistant coaches Paul Kirk and Steve McMahon, will take over as coach for Paul Williams and hopes to lead the team to success. “I think he will be great because he really just wants us to have fun,” junior Zach Kerr said.
While this is Long’s first year as a golf coach, he has some experience playing the sport. “I have been begging to be the coach for three years and got rejected every time” Long said.
He finally got his chance, so the team is expecting big things with his arrival.
After their first match against Quince Orchard, Bethesda Chevy Chase and Walter Johnson, the team shot a score of 204, but they were able to recover and come back stronger for the second match against QO, Walt Whitman and Churchill, and shot a 194. The team placed second in their last match at Laytonsville shooting a score of 187. The team currently sits in third place out of eight in the Yachmetz division and is looking to climb up the standings.
After the first three matches, senior Joey Voyta has a scoring average of 35.67 and is tied for second in the individual standings in the county. Junior Zach Kerr has a scoring average of 38 and sophomore Noah Siman has shot an average of 38.33. Senior Darren Feldman has shot an average of 39.67. After two matches for the girls, sophomore Andrea Chen has shot an average of 38 and currently sits in third place in the girls’ division.
During their first match against WJ, QO, and BCC, Kerr was disqualified due to a WJ player writing down a score that was better than what Kerr actually earned. “It really sucked getting disqualified because I was playing good that round,” Kerr said.
The upperclassmen will need to step up if the team wants to have any success after the departures of Shah and Weitz. “This season we have a lot of veteran players and some rookies who will be learning from the veterans,” Long said.
The expectations for the team this season will be lower than those from last year. “I think we will be good this year but not better than last year because we lost our two best players,” Kerr said.
Voyta is this year’s captain and will look to lead the team along with Feldman, Kerr and Siman. These four will look to lead the team into states by scoring under or at a certain combined score.
“I think we have a strong team and I think we are starting to put the pieces together. I believe that if we play our best, we can win states and finally end our two year drought,” Voyta said.
The team’s next match is against Sherwood, QO and Northwest at Falls Road golf course on Sept. 14 and they follow that match by playing Northwest, Whitman, and BCC on Sept. 20, but both of these matches are too late to be covered in this issue.

golf

Ryan Ullman

Sports Editor