For coach Rick Eckert and the Emporia High girls golf team, the focus this season will be meshing a solid foundation of returning players with some raw but promising newcomers.
The squad gets its first chance to find out just what type of team it will be when it opens its season Tuesday by playing host to the Emporia Invitational at the Emporia Municipal Golf Course.
“We’re excited about our top three girls progressing as far as they have in the offseason,” Eckert said, “and from the four other young ladies that we’ve got that are new this year, all four of them, at one point or another, are going to be contributing for us.”
The top returner for the Lady Spartans is junior Maryann Bennett. As a sophomore last fall, Bennett paced EHS at the Regional meet by finishing 21st.
Joining Bennett as returners are sophomores Hannah Watkins and Rachel Clopton. At Regionals last season, Clopton finished 28th and Watkins came in 44th.
Eckert said he was expecting dramatic improvement out of all three after they put in plenty of time on the course this summer, adding that all three were “hitting the ball so much better than they were last year.”
“Maryann and Rachel and Hannah played quite a bit of golf this summer, and it’s already starting to show,” the coach said. “They’re shooting scores below what they were shooting last year at the end of the season.
“The top three girls have improved a lot this year.”
New to the team this year are juniors Sueng-Yun Shin and Candice Price and sophomores Makenzie Harder and Melissa Heintz.
With the top four scores counting toward the team score in tournaments, Eckert said he would need one out of the four newcomers to step up each week at every tournament.
“If we can get one or two of them to contribute at each tournament,” he said, “I think we’ll be in pretty good shape.”
As EHS gets its season started, Eckert said he hoped to see improved team finishes this season, but added that it would take some work in some specific areas for the squad to move up the leaderboard each week.
“Their short games, that’s something that we’re going to be working on a lot,” Eckert said. “When you get to the green, that’s where, in girls golf, you see a lot of girls losing a lot of strokes very quickly.
“That’s what we’re going to try and focus on.”
The Emporia Invitational begins at 3 p.m. Tuesday.