Brown County High School

This past golf season, I posted an article on this site following each match. I elected to do that from a third person perspective to make the post more of a news article. This post will be different. It will be from the first person point of view and should therefore sound less newsy and more personal. Our girls golf season lasts less than two months. We officially started the first Friday in August, and our season ended Monday, September 23, when we were eliminated in the IHSAA Sectional. Our stellar senior, Lilly VanNess, will still be representing our school and community this Saturday, September 28, when she competes in the IHSAA Regional at The Legends Golf Course in Franklin, and she will be well supported! For most of the summer, it looked as if Lilly would be the lone senior on the roster, and looked as if we would not even have enough players to score as a team. Returning from the 2023 team were junior Chloe Poling and sophomore Caitlynn Lookebill, giving us only three golfers. In high school golf, four scores are required to officially post a team score. Thankfully, Lilly was able to persuade her best friend and co-worker, senior Katie Johnson, to give golf a shot. Katie, with no prior golf experience, courageously jumped right in to our summer sessions. She was attentive, conscientious, and very coachable. Without Katie, we would not have had a team. We picked up a fifth player, senior Ava Sanders, who also had no previous golf experience. Ava, a member of the soccer team, wanted to try to juggle both sports, and we were certainly willing to try it. Like Katie, Ava was extremely receptive to instruction and soaked up what we threw at her like a sponge. We withheld her from competition until we thought she was ready. While Katie enabled us to field a team, Ava gave us another scoring option. The five - Lilly, Katie, Ava, Chloe, and Caitlynn - all contributed to a highly successful season, a season that included a 6th place finish in the sectional, a runner-up finish in the WIC, two 7th place finishes in invitationals, a dual/tri-match record of 12 - 2, and an overall record of 37-21. It truly was a memorable season, a season that once seemed to be in peril but became nothing but better and better as it moved to its climax. To Chloe and Caitlynn, I hope to see you next summer when we get back after it, and I hope you might be able to recruit a friend or two to join us. And to Lilly, Katie, and Ava, farewell and thank you for being a huge part of the BCHS golf family and its story.