Devin Savano and I are proud to be the coaches of some of the Windsor junior golf teams. Most of the kids on the team have been between the ages of 8 and 14. They hit a ton of golf balls on the Windsor GC driving range and they play hundreds of holes each spring and summer.
Due to the generosity of head Windsor GC pro Jason Schmuhl and his staff, there’s an abundance of local kids learning this game of a lifetime on the WGC property.
Now, many of these players have reached the Windsor High School boys golf team and the season is underway. Head coach Jason Fayter had over three weeks of tryouts and amazingly the top six varsity players are all freshman: ( in order of rankings ) Will Hoff, Isa Mendoza, J.J. Scott, Mason Tomasek, Jackson Calegari and Trenton Becker.
The remaining JV players are Will Schettler, Ross Potter, Johnny Pachorek, Liam Morrison, John Wheeler, Ian Hopkins and Aiden Overdorf. Ten of the 13 players are freshmen and the future is very bright.
The head coach of the golf team is WHS P.E teacher Jason Fayter and his two assistant coaches are Todd Fletcher and Brian Tofflemire.
I suggested to Coach Fayter that the golfers post four 9-hole scores and then count the best three scores. Coach then averaged them out to determine the rankings. This method gave the kids a chance to recover from one bad round. The scores came from Healdsburg GC and Northwood and the other two came from Windsor GC.
As a parent and former high school golfer I know the pressure of golf tryouts. I tried out for the Marin Catholic golf team each year between 1984 – 1987 and only made the team my final year.
As I write this, the season has been suspended due to the threat of coronavirus until at least April. Even if the season is cancelled the coaches and the parents will encourage the kids to play a variety of Sonoma County courses on their own time.
There’s a new crop of seventh and eighth graders waiting in the wings so this team better keep practicing.
