By Kayla Nguyen
This Thursday afternoon the girls’ varsity golf team lost to the Huntington Beach [HB] Oilers in a close game at the Barons’ home field, Mile Square Park, with a score of 197-202.
The players arrived around 45 minutes before the match started to warm up. They were feeling optimistic about the game, but were conscious of the Huntington Beach High School golf team’s competitiveness and skill.
“[I am] pretty confident, but HB is a pretty competitive team. So I’m hoping we can stick it out this time and play one of our best rounds at our home course,” senior Kylie Phi said.
Head coach Carter Keyser felt that Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley’s teams were the two teams most evenly matched in the league, which made the game slightly nerve wracking, but exciting.
“I definitely hope that we win. And I just hope [the] girls play well, and that even if we don’t win, as long as we play well that’s all I can ask of them,” Keyser said.
The players were split up into pairs, with one person playing alone, against another pair from Huntington Beach’s team. The pairings were: senior Kassidy Vongxay and senior Kylie Phi, senior Dakota Lam and sophomore Megan Vo, junior Ruby Bui and freshman Baothu Nguyen and sophomore Carli McCormick.
Although a game normally consists of 18 holes, they played nine holes since it was a non-league game.
The individual scores ranked:
- Vongxay: 35 strokes
- Lam: 37 strokes
- Phi: 38 strokes
- Vo: 42 strokes
- Bui: 50 strokes
- McCormick: 50 strokes
- Nguyen: 54 strokes
Keyser was impressed with senior captain Kassidy Vongxay, who had the lowest strokes on the team and had her best round of the year. He also thought Dakota Lam played well with a low score of 37.
Moving forward, the next girl’s golf game will be on Tuesday October 3 at El Dorado Park against Los Alamitos High School.
“They’re probably arguably the best team in the league. So I just like to be competitive with them. It’s at their place, so it’s gonna be really tough. Our girls aren’t as familiar with that golf course as they are, so they have a big advantage,” Keyser said. “But if we play great, I think anything can happen, so I just like to see a competitive match and for our girls to play well.”
