The Worcester High School girls’ golf team finally looks like a team and it’s playing more like one as well.
“It’s not a coincidence, it’s a fact,” coach Meghan McDonald said.
During each of McDonald’s first eight years as coach, the team never won more than one match. This year, it got off to a 3-3-1 start and even though the team has lost its last five matches it’s still been much more competitive than in the past.
The team attributes the improvement to the support from the Worcester Ladies Golf, Inc., a 501 c3 charitable organization founded last year by the Worcester Country Club women’s golf committee to foster interest in the game and provide opportunities for young women of limited means to play the game of golf. So far, the Worcester High School girls’ golf team has been the sole beneficiary.
Close to 30 WCC women paid for matching golf bags, jackets, caps and instruction over the past two years. They also donated slightly used golf clubs that WCC head pro Andy Lane arranged into eight full sets.
“The proper instruction has created the wins,” McDonald said, “and looking like a team matters. If you look good, you feel good and you are good.”
The Worcester High School girls’ golf team ends its regular season against Quabbin Regional at 3 pm Tuesday at Green Hill Municipal Golf Course and will wrap up its season on May 24 in the Central Mass. Athletic Directors Association Tournament at Quail Hollow Golf & Country Club in Oakham.
WCC member Nancy Quimby came up with the idea of supporting the Worcester girls’ golf team. When she coached Westborough High School girls’ tennis from 2000-2008, her teams always had the equipment, uniforms and lessons they needed. They knew how to play the game before they even tried out for the high school team.
She realized that the Worcester High School girls’ golf team wasn’t as lucky so she wanted to help and she recruited other WCC women to join in the cause.
The WCC women paid for 12 bags at $165 each, 10 blue jackets embroidered with a white “W” at $100 each and 24 blue caps at $25 each.
Former WCC head pro Allan Belden and his daughter Maddy, both of whom work now at Salem CC, were among the four NEPGA pros who offered lessons at Green Hill at least three days a week last spring at no cost to the Worcester girls. A grant paid for the NEPGA instruction last spring and Worcester Ladies Golf footed the bill when Belden, Lane and WCC assistants Aaron Walker and Kyle Puzzo gave the Worcester High School girls’ golf team lessons this spring on simulators at The Links at Stakes.
The instruction paid off. This is the first season that none of the six Worcester golfers playing in a match have had to pick up their golf balls on a hole, which is required after shooting double-par plus one.
“We’re putting the ball in the hole,” McDonald said. “We’ve had years where every golfer on every hole has picked up.”
McDonald said she could teach the girls how to love the game and encourage them to try hard every day, but the instruction has helped her as well as her players. She has learned a few tips from the instructors to share with her team.
Quimby was thrilled when she heard that the team had improved.
“Oh my gosh, I was so excited,” she said. “That was the goal. Having been coached, I know what it feels like. I know that golf is sort of an individual sport like tennis is and you want these girls to feel like they’re part of a team and that’s the experience that is going to make a difference for the rest of their lives.”
This year, the team has 10 golfers, two more than last year. Three years ago, the team had only three golfers. Nine of the 10 golfers attend Doherty High, including Margaret Shannon. Her twin sister Kathryn attends South High. Their parents donated a dozen Callaway golf balls for each girl with the inscription “WORCESTER GOLF.” The Shannon girls are great-granddaughters of Walter Cosgrove, Green Hill’s first golf pro.
The Ping golf bags are red, white and blue with an American flag just like the US Olympic women’s golf team carried. The girls return the bags to McDonald at the end of the season because they belong to the team.
The bags, jackets and caps all have a “W” embroidered on them. McDonald said the team chose the simple “W” so it would stand for Worcester CC as well as Worcester High School.
The WHS girls received support previously. In the early years of McDonald’s run as coach, Green Hill head pro Matt Moison allowed the WHS girls to use his club’s rental clubs and let them keep them if they continued to play. McDonald credited Moison with doing whatever he could to help the team.
“Our team knows they have a home at Green Hill,” McDonald said. “Matt and his staff always encourage them to keep playing.”
Masterman’s Safety and Industrial Supply in Auburn paid for golf shirts about six years ago and the Sullivan Insurance Group pays for them now. But the WCC women have taken their level of assistance to a higher level.
Senior captain Taylor Gazaille used to play golf with her uncle’s old sets of clubs that were too big for her. Since she joined the team last year, she’s been playing with a used set that her mother’s friend gave her. She didn’t have any golf lessons, but turned to golf after giving up softball.
Gazaille enjoyed golf so much, she began caddying at WCC last summer.
“It’s a great opportunity to learn more about the game,” she said, “and see how other people play.”
Lane said Gazaille has become a popular caddy and she has been asked to return this summer. Of WCC’s 80-90 caddies, less than 10 are female.
“Hopefully, more and more girls come out to caddy,” Lane said.
Gazaille said she was one of only two female caddies her first day on the job.
“It was a little nerve wracking,” Gazaille said, “but when I first went out there all the members were welcoming. They talked to me. It wasn’t like I was just there carrying their bags. They wanted to have conversations with me.”
Sophomore Meredith Kapacziewski also stopped playing softball and she decided to take up golf last season because her sister, Reaghan, had played it for McDonald. So during her first year of playing golf, she had a new bag, jacket and cap as well as clubs donated by WCC.
“To start playing with everything they’ve given us has been great,” she said.
Sophomore Yuetong “Rose” Zhao never played golf before moving from China to Worcester in 2019 and she appreciates the patience of her coach and the support of the WCC women. She plays with clubs donated by the WCC women.
“I can’t imagine the Worcester team before the donations,” she said. “They didn’t even have the same uniforms or the same bags. You don’t look like a team. So everyone is just not like a family, not with each other. So I think it’s really important that you have to look like a team. Then you can help each other to play this game and grow through this.”
WCC ladies golf chair Robin Hellinger said if anyone is interested in making a tax-deductible donation to the 501 3c, checks can be made out to Worcester Ladies Golf LLC and mailed to Andy Lane, 2 Rice Street, Worcester, Ma. Donations can also be made via Venmo to @ladiesgolfwcc.
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—Contact Bill Doyle at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @BillDoyle15
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Local support and contributions have helped Worcester girls’ golf team