Girls’ golf shoots for best scores in classroom

Richard Marcoux, Sports Writer

The girls golf team of 8 girls, competes in the fall sports season every year. The golf team has 9 golf tournaments, 10 if any golfers qualify for state this year. While the season for golf is short the time that it takes up is compact. 

The girls golf team consists of eight girls competing in the 2019 fall sports season. During the girls golf season, the team competes in an average of 2 invites a week. During these invites the team leaves school from 7:00-7:30. This leads to the golfers missing full days of school, so work must be made up in all four classes. 

Coach Hjelle has been coaching the girls golf team for 9 seasons. In those nine years coach Hjelle, “has had little to no impact on them getting caught up.”  

Every member of the team does get a schedule with all the tournament dates on it so the student athletes know when they will be absent from class so they can notify their teachers in advance. 

In Coach Hjelle’s career at Omaha North High School he has coached baseball and basketball. “The responsibility of those athletes is nowhere near the responsibility of the golf team.” 

The golfers are responsible for all the work that they miss on the day of the tournaments. Getting the work to the students is not a problem even with the amount of class time that is missed just to compete at a single tournament.  

“There’s no issue with the teachers getting them the work, the girls get the work themselves.” 

Elyse Saxton 12 is a four-year golfer on the girl’s golf team. Each year contributing to the golf team’s high GPA and has been highly competitive with class rank in the class of 2020. Even with having to balance the busy golf season and a difficult schedule of honors and AP classes. 

Each week during the golf season the Saxton misses at least one full day of school during the season. This means that Saxton must make up all work from missing school on top of competing on the varsity golf team.  

The team does support each other through this heavy amount of work. Our team is mostly emotional support, especially this year there’s quite a few of us in the same classes. We can help each other with classes if we need it.” 

With this heavy amount of work Saxton has gained “Time management, one of the biggest things is knowing how much you can do.”  

To Saxton, “it is very important for me to do well in classes, so it’s me knowing when I have to get certain things done instead of doing nothing.” 

The time management Saxton has obtained from the four years of being on the golf team has allowed her to compete at her highest ability in the classroom and on the course. 

The golf team has had a high team GPA even with this difficult schedule to have balance golf, school, and extra curriculars with. Last year the girls golf team schedule had 11 invites in the first 8 weeks of school. That many invites resulted in a total of 44 class periods missed. Even with that many excused absences the girls golf team was able to accumulate a team GPA of 4.09.