Over their spring season, the varsity girls golf team won four out of their six tournaments and placed runner-up for the other two. This year, the girls won the Hutto Spring Invitational at Star Ranch on Feb. 18. With two more tournaments left in their season, the team will begin preparing for their postseason UIL events. The girls’ next event will occur on Feb. 27-28 at their Jay Brewer Memorial tournament, with the final invitational being the Colin Clark Memorial on Mar. 11.
“The eight regular season tournaments are all invitational events,” head golf coach Aaron Ford said. “All of the tournaments are in preparation for the UIL events at the end of the year: districts, regionals and state.”
The tournaments that the team compete at throughout the season include both team and individual competitions, with the team composed of five players. Each member will participate individually and total their strokes for an overall score. The scoring for the team is based on the lowest four out of five girls, and the highest score gets dropped. Once all scores are recorded, the lowest number wins.
“We set goals at the beginning of every year, team goals and personal goals that everyone sets and discusses with our coach,” junior Michaela Partridge said. “Towards the end of the season, we get back together and evaluate if those goals have been achieved.”
Since the scoring is done individually on each member’s strokes during the tournaments, this requires after-school practices on golf courses like the University of Texas Golf Club.
“The team practices relentlessly,” Ford said. “Our girls spend about eight hours a week practicing together as a team. Everything from team practice, qualifying, and morning workouts before school. The girls also practice individually on their own time as well.”
Once invitational events end for the spring season, UIL events will begin and continue during the team’s journey to make it to state. Over the years, the golf team gained the title of five-time state champions, with their last state win being in 2024 as 6A state champions. This year, the state tournament will be from May. 4-5 at Tournament Players Club (TPC) in San Antonio.
“My personal takeaways from competing tend to be looking over my statistics from each round, like what I did well and what I need to improve on,” Partridge said. “Many things that I work on tend to be long-term things, so there have been situations where I have to work with the issues I have in my swing during important tournament seasons.”
At the start of each year, the team will get together to coordinate and come up with individual and team goals they want to achieve. According to Ford, the girls have done “really good” this season, reflecting the “goals and objectives the team made.”
“The team so far has had pretty good wins,” Partridge said. “We’ve all improved as a team and everyone did individually, but [there are] still many other areas to improve on.”
