The Capital City Lady Cavaliers are ready for the next step forward.
The Lady Cavaliers tee off for the start of their fourth girls golf season in the Hickman Quad today against Father Tolton, Palmyra and the host Kewpies.
“We’ve been kind of honing in on individual skills,” Capital City coach Caitlin Phoenix said. “I’ve seen a lot of good things. You can tell, just even from last season, the girls have kind of made leaps and bounds. There’s big improvements from where we were at the beginning of last season.”
After not having a single senior through the first two seasons of the program, the Lady Cavaliers were senior-heavy last year with five competitors graduating, and are this year again with five more seniors. Phoenix said she sees the large group of upperclassmen as the team leaders, especially those who have played since they were freshmen when the program began.
“They’ve all got that kind of camaraderie,” Phoenix said. “I’m kind of relying on all of them to guide these underclassmen and show them what being a part of the Cavs golf team is about.”
Makayla Hoscheit, Lucia Howser, Kylie Reed, Katilyn White and Cheyanne Willis will take the lead as the seniors, but sophomore Jaycie Lowery will likely lead the standings for the Lady Cavaliers as the only returner with state meet experience.
Juniors Shelby Welling and Kambry Pistel, sophomore Morgan Meredith and freshman Addison Thosten will join those seniors and Lowery on the course.
Lowery shot an 83-95-178 during the two-day meet at Meadow Lake Acres Country Club in New Bloomfield.
“It was a very good experience for her, obviously coming in as a freshman, there’s a maturity there and she was very young,” Phoenix said. “After Day 1, she played really well and was sitting nicely in the top 15, then Day 2, she came back and struggled. … I think she learned very quickly how important the mental aspect of it is. I know she spent a lot of time this summer working on focusing on that next shot, staying positive and just trying to get that mental aspect right and I think that will translate over a lot.”
The mental aspect of golf is what Phoenix said she hopes to see improvements on, not just from Lowery, but from the whole team.
She said one of her goals was to not be able to tell how her golfers are playing just by looking at them.
“If I’m standing two holes away, I don’t want to be able to tell how you’re playing,” Phoenix said. “We’ve got to keep the highs and the lows, we’ve got to find that middle ground and just kind of coast there. We really need to work on not getting down on ourselves and I’m really hoping that translates to lower scores.”
Those lower scores are an annual goal for every golf team. Phoenix said she has seen the Lady Cavaliers’ team average drop each year and she’s hoping to continue the trend. From shooting in the 400s as a team two seasons ago to getting down into the 360s or 370s last season. She said her goal this year is to be consistently in the 350s and to place in the top three as a team in at least one of the team’s bigger invitationals on the schedule.
The Lady Cavaliers’ schedule looks pretty much the same as last year, with the Lady Laker Golf Invitational next Wednesday, the Lady Crusader Invitational on Sept. 7, the Smith-Cotton Invitational on Sept. 19, the JC Invitational on Sept. 26 and the Central Missouri Activities Conference Tournament on Sept. 28. The one major addition is the Versailles Tournament on Sept. 16.
One of the issues every Capital City team will face this year is replacing senior leadership for the first time in program history after the school graduated its first class of seniors in the spring. Phoenix said the upperclassmen aren’t her worry this year, but the program needs to do a better job encouraging younger participation, with only two sophomores and one freshman on the roster.
“We’re going to have to start looking a little bit more to the middle schools and trying to get those younger kids, try to get some interest in the lower classes,” Phoenix said. “Getting new juniors or seniors on the team is great, but if they’ve never played before, that’s also a big time investment and it’s hard to do because they just don’t have the skills yet and experience, and in golf, that’s a big deal.”
But for now, Phoenix has a team full of upperclassmen ready to show their development and take the next step to be competitive in districts, which Phoenix said is always one of her big season goals.
“I’m excited for what we’ve got, I can see a lot of potential,” Phoenix said. “It’s just a matter of taking that and actually scoring in the match.”