Lebanon\u2019s girls golf team is on the upswing, big time, from where the Warriors were just three years ago.<\/p>\n
That was when Coach Bart Baldwin arrived to take over a program with a roster barely large enough to field a varsity team of five girls. But they were a good group, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat group of girls I inherited, all 5 girls on the team averaged a 4.0 GPA. We were recognized by the state as the highest GPA in the entire state for spring sports, which was a nice feather in the cap.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year the Warriors had nine golfers; this year they have 18.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going really well,\u201d Baldwin said last week as he worked with the golfers who showed up at Pineway Golf Course for a practice session during the parent conferences break.<\/p>\n
This is a young roster \u2013 six are back from last year\u2019s team which included seniors Nora Horne and Julia Morse, with four sophomores and three juniors.<\/p>\n
Returnees are now-juniors Carmen Johnson, Sierra Miller, Inez O\u2019Driscoll and Lucy O\u2019Driscoll, along with sophomores Sophie Culbertson and Bailey Lester.<\/p>\n
The team is led by three of those \u2013 Culbertson, Lester and Miller, who return from last year\u2019s varsity and are joined this year on the top five by Johnson and freshman Kapri Collins.<\/p>\n
Miller is the lone player who was on that 2024 team when Baldwin took over.<\/p>\n
The roster also includes senior Tenaya Garcia, who is new to the program; sophomores Aniah Bremner and Ani Olson; and freshmen Kapri Collins, Saharra Garcia,\u00a0 Leilahni Hall, Julia Hearn, Quinn Miles, Violet Miller, Kourtlyn Starr, Jillian Stuck and Victoria Taggart.<\/p>\n
Baldwin, who is assisted by Johnny Garcia, said he\u2019s fielding both a junior varsity and a junior varsity 2 team when possible this year.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a work in progress, Baldwin said<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll be back next year and with the team that we have, we\u2019re hoping to have a team either this year or next year that can get into the regional tournament, be one of the top 3 teams in our league.<\/p>\n
Baldwin, who teaches at Ralston Academy, also coaches volleyball at Seven Oak Middle School.<\/p>\n
He played golf at Central High School in the late 1980s, \u201cand I\u2019ve always loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of stopped playing golf for a while because the fishing got pretty good in my life, but now that I\u2019m back here and they had an opening, I thought, \u2018You know, this is something I like to do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The Warriors are nearing the midway point of their season, with two tournaments under their belt and four to go.<\/p>\n
They will play at Mallard Creek April 27, then host the Mid-Willamette Conference championship tournament May 11-12 at Mallard.<\/p>\n
Lebanon finished seventh with 482 points\u00a0 in a MWC match at Cross Creek in Dallas on April 6, which was won by Crescent Valley with 382 points, followed by Corvallis (403) and\u00a0 West Albany (412).<\/p>\n
Culbertson led the Warriors, shooting 107, with Miller finishing with 112 after, Baldwin noted, \u201cgetting a little overheated.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was like, maybe, like 12 over par in the last three holes and she was only like, 40 over par all day,\u201d the coach said. \u201cIt\u2019s there. Her game\u2019s definitely there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have some players that can shoot low and their scores are starting to drop. So I\u2019m actually pretty excited about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Culbertson and Miller have a shot at the district tournament, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have some pretty strong teams in the league. So if we could get some individuals qualified for regionals, that would be great. And then from there, it\u2019s kind of up to them on if they can, you know, shoot low and get to the state tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said his goal now is to get his JV golfers to the point where they can shoot \u201cdouble bogey golf.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they can get to, like, a 54 on for nine holes, that would be great.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ultimate goal, especially for newcomers who aren\u2019t ready to tee off from the box yet, he said, is \u201cI just want them to love the game and start to develop because over the time, we\u2019re going to get their scores to where they\u2019re starting to play from the tee box in order to play the whole game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baldwin said both his program and the boys have gotten support from the community, especially from Pineway\u2019s Mitchell Glasser, whose family has owned the course for generations, who recently donated separate checks for $1,200 each to the Warriors programs.<\/p>\n
Also, he said, the high school Booster Club has donated $1,000 to support a summer camp for middle-schoolers that the high school teams are holding after school lets out in June \u201cfor, hopefully, three Tuesdays.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lebanon\u2019s girls golf team is on the upswing, big time, from where the Warriors were just three years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[11617,93,549],"class_list":{"0":"post-67639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lebanon","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-lebanon","10":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116406481178723799","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}