‘This sport is definitely growing’ – Beragampengetahuan

In a year where Barbie and Taylor Swift have asserted a strong female presence on the entertainment scene, local girls are aiming to make the same impact on Anne Arundel County golf.

Twenty-eight girls met at Compass Pointe on Sept. 27 to compete in an event, not with boys like normally happens, but with each other. Crofton’s Francesca Cadori topped the field, winning with a 45.

She was one of the few lifelong golfers in attendance. Broadneck’s Summer Stroop and Severna Park’s Nicol Chovanec, the eventual county champion and runner-up, respectively, couldn’t compete because they were already at their regular season match limit. And still, there were 28 girls competing with each other.

“It’s really great to see,” Stroop said. “This sport is definitely growing.”

More and more girls are picking up clubs, trading idle autumn afternoons for outings with their teams at the golf course. Area coaches noticed the growth poke up after coronavirus restrictions lifted, but numbers have swelled to the point that Anne Arundel County held its first girls-only team competitions six times this season.

Eight county programs fielded girls teams: Severna Park, South River, Broadneck, Arundel, Crofton, Southern, Chesapeake and North County: the latter two needed a few weeks to assemble a full team of four girls. Severna Park claimed the first girls team regular season title after going undefeated (18-0).

Chesapeake Science Point athletic director Matt Smith, who serves as the county’s golf commissioner, counted 50 girls golfing in the county this year, up from 40 a year ago.

Cadori dabbled with golf her entire life and dedicated herself in eighth grade. A regular medal-earner at the county level, the senior was the first girl to join Crofton’s team three years ago. Another joined the next year. This year, there’s 10.

“I feel glad a lot more girls are getting to experience what’s often seen as a guys sport,” Cadori said. “I used to feel kind of ashamed saying I played golf, and now seeing all these girls be proud of it, it’s just an amazing feeling.”

Junior Liv Bacasnot split time between dance and golfing for Arundel in the fall, partially because she’s been taking after her father in the sport for the past two years, partially because you’re not permitted to hit things in dance, and partially because of the sense of community and friendship she said she doesn’t feel anywhere else.

“Dance is about performance, but golf is about being an athlete,” Bacasnot said, “and being an athlete is amazing. You have double the opportunities now, and you can still play co-ed with the boys.”

“I used to feel kind of ashamed saying I played golf, and now seeing all these girls be proud of it, it’s just an amazing feeling.”

—  Crofton golfer Francesca Cadori

Meade, Glen Burnie, Chesapeake Science Point and Northeast — all C Division teams which carry the smallest rosters overall — don’t compete in the girls tournament yet.

“The goal is to keep it going and increase girls golf,” Smith said. The county hopes for the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association to split girls golf into a separate sport from the boys.

Phelps Prescott tried to make it happen 15 years ago. Now retired to Florida, Prescott coached and oversaw county golf in different capacities starting in 2008. Even then, the girls he saw playing for Anne Arundel teams were fewer but gifted, with several from Arundel, Northeast and Severna Park garnering individual state titles over the years.

“I think it’s unfair within the state of Maryland that we don’t have girls team golf. You have it in so many other states. How we don’t have a girls team state champion but we have it co-ed is beyond me,” Prescott said. “Howard County established team play for their girls well over 12 years ago. I wanted it in Anne Arundel.”

His first success came when the county initiated individual girls play in the 2017 season, but he didn’t want progress to stop there. The depth of success should’ve been bigger, he said, but the lack of team girls golf is the reason it wasn’t there.

The future of Anne Arundel girls golf couldn’t just depend on the girls who picked it up before high school. So coaches got recruiting.

North County coach Jeremy Caruso’s message of low-stress golf took months to sink in for his new girls.

Leading up to the summer — golf competition starts in mid-August, a few weeks ahead of other fall sports — potential golfers repeated their anxiety over getting cut. There’s no way, they thought, they could come in with no experience and make varsity unless they turned out to be a prodigy. But when they started playing, they realized the truth.

It didn’t matter if they were bad to start, Caruso said. That wasn’t the point.

His assistant coach, Noah Nathan, pestered Marissa Reiss and her friend Berkley Strauss to enlist during their social studies classes. Reiss’ initial response was simple: “I don’t want to, thanks.” Then, dragging Strauss into it, Reiss relented: “Well. I have nothing better to do.”

Reiss’ golf experience up until them consisted of mini golf. In her words, she “sucked.” But she realized over time that at a point, so did everyone else. She laughs with her coaches when they show her swings, whether she does what she’s meant to do or not. She realized everyone wanted her to improve, but no one minded her pace. She made friends with girls from other schools. It proved an entirely different experience than track, which she’s run for five years.

“Track, I know how each day is going to go, what we’re going to do, what the season will be like. Golf is something I wasn’t really expecting,” Reiss said. “I never knew what was coming next, and that’s why I like it.”

Chesapeake senior Rori Campbell used to play soccer, but swapped it for golf two years ago to better her own mental health with stress. With golf, she can just walk around and envelop herself in nature. There’s no one she can let down but herself, she said.

“For us in high school girls sports, they expect way too much,” Campbell said. “This is just so much more calm. I can see why this would be an escape for people, too.”

In other sports, your opponent is simply that, said Caruso, also an assistant baseball coach in the spring. “Whereas here, your shot has no eaffect on theirs. It makes a really cool atmosphere,” he said. “I think people are kind of looking for that kind of low stress.”

Maryland golf courses reopened in May 2020, whereas team fall sports wouldn’t make a return in Anne Arundel until spring 2021. In September 2020, Visit Annapolis advertised golf as a pandemic-friendly sport, given its outside and spread-out nature.

But even now, three seasons deep post-pandemic, girls golf is still inclining. Caruso hears his girls fawn over what they see on TikTok. Girls golf videos accrue tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of views, and that’s evident of the widespread growth that’s not limited to this area.

According to Golfweek, the U.S. Women’s Open, held in early July, earned record TV ratings as the third and final rounds eclipsed 1 million viewers. The LGPA’s Dana Open later that month also claimed 1 million watchers in the final round.

It’s worth noting, too, that the prize money for women’s golf is also surging. The U.S. Women’s Open, for instance, almost doubled its purse from $5.5 million to $10 million in 2022 (with another $1 million increase for 2023).

Women college golfers are raking in NIL money, and the examples are growing. Stanford’s Rose Zhang became the first college athlete to sign with Adidas in 2022 and partnered with the company as a professional golfer this past spring. This Is Sparta!, the Michigan State athletes NIL collective, made a deal with women’s golf in 2022 that was to give each student-athlete $2,500 in January 2023, per ON3 NIL.

Smith noted the continual increase could be chalked up to the fact that the fears of the world since the pandemic have not really gone away.

“They feel like they have more control of their destiny,” Smith said. “You can practice outside of school. It’s something families can do together, and I’ve been seeing a lot of them getting involved. It’s something you can do down the road.”

That’s something Chesapeake’s Presley Acton looks forward to, once she exacts her goal of proving to men that she’s just as good as they are in their sport. Her season-low is a 52 for nine holes, but she intends to improve before she hits the University of Maryland for chemical engineering.

[ Broadneck golf’s Summer Stroop headlines Bruins’ team win at county championships; Crofton’s Owen Newberry claims boys title ]

Contents

Varsity Highlights

Weekly

Get the latest high school sports stories, photos and video from around the region.

“These relationships are just going to build and get stronger and help you later in life. You make a lot of business deals on the golf course, or that’s what I’ve been told,” the junior said. “And, it’s just fun.”

And speaking of the business world, implementing girls golf as its own separate entity is going to draw in more girls, Phelps said. It’s simple economics: supply creates demand.

“If you’re not a very good golfer, you’re more likely to go out and be not very good amongst other girls. That alone will get girls out on the course,” Phelps said. “You’re going to have fifth, sixth and seventh graders now see that’s available and have a varsity sport to try for.”

Of all the girls who competed in Anne Arundel’s inaugural girls team competitions, few remain for the state tournament starting Monday as individuals or on teams: Chovanec and Lily Wells from Severna Park, Stroop and Cadori.

As a graduating senior, Cadori won’t get to see girls golf recognized as a separate sport in Maryland. But she thinks it would be “amazing.”

“We still have more work to do. I feel these matches aren’t taken as seriously as the boys,” Cadori said. “But we definitely have the potential.”