Philomath’s inaugural girls golf team features a first-time high school coach and seven student-athletes for a spring season that is about to get started.
Seniors Kynlee Albin, Sophia Bauer, Ashleigh Brown, Reagan Chisholm and Anneka Steen, and juniors Shaylee May and Isabelle Muir all signed up to hit the links. Logan Martin is their head coach.
“We were hoping to field a team, which you need five for a varsity match, and to have seven ladies show up is really encouraging,” Martin said during an interview Thursday afternoon.
May, Muir and Steen have not been able to practice with their participation in girls basketball.
In high school tournaments, the top four scores are taken from the five varsity participants to calculate a team score.
The four girls that have been practicing only got started a little more than a week ago. Martin said most of them are new to golf.
“Golf is a really difficult game to come into because it’s constant work and it’s constantly battling the mental side of the game and almost understanding how to utilize every part of your body to hit this tiny ball 300 yards down a narrow fairway,” Martin said.
“So my goal this year is one, I want to be a safe place for these young ladies to learn the game and two, I want to be able to teach them resilience,” he added. “And I think there’s no greater sport for teaching that than golf — just learning to forget the previous shot when you make a mistake and stand over a ball and be ready to do the next thing.”
Martin said golf is about making small, attainable goals and just moving incrementally forward.
“We’re going to go out and compete obviously because knowing you’re showing up for any varsity athletic tournament you want to compete to win,” he said. “But what we want to do is we want to get this program started with just our best foot forward of hey, this is a great place to learn the game, to enjoy the game and to compete with yourself as well as others.”
As for the coach’s background, Martin and his family moved to the area from San Diego a couple of years ago after his wife landed a job at Oregon State. He runs a creative branding agency, which includes some video work with Trysting Tree Golf Club in Corvallis.
“I fell in love with golf a while back — especially with living in San Diego where you can play year round,” he said. “I came up here a couple of years ago and started playing at Trysting Tree and getting to know some of the guys there.”
Among those he met was Hogan Arey, a PGA associate at the club.
“I heard that Philomath was starting a golf program and Hogan out a Trysting Tree was telling me that I’d be perfect for it,” Martin said.
Martin’s coaching background until now involved has middle school and below — basketball, soccer and baseball — as his kids participated.
“I figured, hey, I’ve got coaching experience and have a heart for teaching young people and I love the game of golf,” Martin said. “They took a chance on me.”
The season opens Monday with Philomath’s scheduled appearance in a 17-school tournament at McNary in Keizer. The Warriors won’t be able to bring a full squad and the coach said that either the team will pull out of the meet or just enter the nine-hole junior varsity event.
Heading into the season, the team schedule as shown on the OSAA website lists three other tournaments in addition to the opener — April 2 at Mallard Creek Golf Course near Sweet Home, April 10 at Langdon Farms Golf Club south of Wilsonville and April 21 at Florence Golf Links. Martin mentioned that a couple of other regular-season meets that have been arranged for April 7 (Diamond Woods Golf Club near Junction City) and April 29 (at Trysting Tree) but those are not yet appearing on the official schedule.
“We’re working really hard to build out a schedule to make sure these girls have opportunities to play every week so the March 17 one was put on the calendar but we knew it was going to be really early — and then half our team made state for basketball,” Martin said. “We might add a tournament or two on the back. A lot of other coaches — we’re all still working to even add a few more tournaments as we speak.”
There will be a district tournament on May 12-13 at Santiam Golf Club near Stayton. The 4A/3A/2A/1A girls state tournament is set for May 19-20 at Trysting Tree.
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