The girls golf team has traded wide green lawns for white screens and iPads as it prepares for the new season due to heat levels preventing outdoor practice.
Temperatures close to 100 degrees have halted after-school practices, but that hasn’t stopped golfers from practicing their swings. They are turning to indoor simulators to improve their skills.
One group of golfers practices on the high school auditorium stage, where a projector displays a golf course on a large white screen. Golfers can practice hitting balls into the white screen, which tracks their swings to give the athletes a chance to see precise statistics such as their swing speed and club face angle.
The team is also using short clubs without a club face that have built-in technology that can simulate and display golf shots on an iPad. And indoor putting mats give players an option to practice their short game.
It’s not perfect, head coach Susan DeVoe said, but it works to help the team practice their swings when they can’t be outside. The Kansas State High School Activities Association prohibits outdoor practice when wet bulb globe temperature — a measure of air temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover — reaches above 90 degrees.
“They’re still swinging a club,” DeVoe said. “If you go out and swing a golf club 100 times a day and never even hit a ball, your swing will improve, because it’s muscle memory. So, we keep the muscle memory going.”
Adding to the practice challenges for the team is the closed Twin Oaks golf course between Eudora and Lawrence. DeVoe said she’s been told it will reopen by the spring, but not in time for the girls’ season.
Instead, the team has had to experiment with indoor practices. Some players have chosen to go practice outdoors on their own, heading to nearby courses and driving ranges even in the intense heat.
Despite the challenges, players are excited for a new year. Four seniors and three varsity golfers returned from last year’s team.
DeVoe said the team is motivated, which is evident in players’ intuition to go practice outdoors by themselves when they can’t as a team.
“They want a repeat of last year,” DeVoe said, referencing the team’s trip to the state championship.
But the team has big shoes to fill. Joellen Vogt graduated after leading the team and finishing fourth at state.
Junior Marleigh Grant and sophomore Brooklynn Akers are two returning varsity players who will help lead the group.
Akers said she was happy with the turnout she had seen from the team, with many girls trying out and wanting to improve their skills.
“We definitely have a lot more girls trying out this year than last year,” Akers said. “It’s been really hot, but we’ve been doing a lot of things, just out there hitting balls.”
Grant said there are some varsity newcomers who will be ready to play big roles for the Cardinals.
“We have the experience,” she said. “And all of the people that are coming up to be on varsity have great potential.”
Both players set the same goal: a return to the state championship as a team.
The team will start that journey Thursday in Hesston, the site of this year’s state championship — if the heat holds off.
Reach reporter Cuyler Dunn at [email protected]
If you appreciate our sports coverage, please donate. Our newspaper depends on your donations to provide coverage of Eudora and continue providing local news.
To donate to support our community journalism, please go to this link: tinyurl.com/y4u7stxj
