After one last powerful swing, players on Northwood’s girls golf team gather nervously under the sweltering sun. When the tallied scores are announced, the players can relish not only in their victory, but also a new milestone: They had just broken the school’s 11-year-long standing record score.

The previous Northwood girls golf record of 184 shots, set in 2011, was broken on Sept. 8 when the team finished their match against University High School with a new low of 182 shots.

“Everyone’s super excited, and to be honest, when the first couple of groups came in, we didn’t even think that we were doing that good,” sophomore Bridget Chantharath said. “It wasn’t until we counted up all the scores, and were like, ‘Oh my God, we just beat the record!’ And obviously coach Halop was really over the moon about it.”

In golf, the “starting six” play in three groups of two. At this match, the starting players were freshman Zoe Yan, sophomores Shivali Shrivastava and Bridget Chantharath, junior co-captain Jia An and seniors co-captain Mia Hennequin and captain Shani Lin. With such a tight-knit group, coordination is crucial.

If you’re unfamiliar with golf, you might not expect that in golf, the lower the score, the better. This is because the goal in golf is striking the ball into the hole with as few strokes as possible.
Last match, all of the players shot nearly equal to the par, which is the number of strokes an expert player is expected to make for a given hole. At the Oak Creek Golf Club, Chantharath, An and Yan all scored 34s, two less than the par of 36.

However, this new record didn’t appear out of the blue—it was something that the team decided to aim for at the beginning of the year. All of the players from last year’s golf team returned, which strengthened their team dynamic more than ever. Last year, the team did not advance as far as they had hoped for in their regional, divisional and state CIF matches. This year, however, they are pushing even harder.

“For our match against University we were coming off of a win so we wanted to keep the momentum going,” Hennequin said. “We pushed each other during practice and worked on parts of our game that we could improve upon.”

With a huge milestone reached, the team looks even higher. Now in the postseason, the golfers are preparing to win at the CIF Team Championships, hoping to ride this wave of victory down the line.

You can see these players all out in action at their next home game against Irvine High School at the Oak Creek Golf Club this Thursday on Sept. 29.