Girls’ Golf Preview: Crescenta Valley, Flintridge Sacred Heart hoping to move up

Having bolstered their respective lineups, the Crescenta Valley High and Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy girls’ golf teams are gearing up for their first matches of the season.

The Falcons and Tologs missed qualifying for the CIF Southern Section playoffs last season. Crescenta Valley Coach Grant Clark and Flintridge Sacred Heart Coach Ric Moore are looking to head in the other direction.

Clark will begin his second season at the helm after Crescenta Valley placed fourth in the Pacific League behind San Marino, Arcadia and Burroughs. San Marino finished fourth at the CIF Southern Section/Women’s Southern California Golf Assn. team championship and advanced to the CIF Southern California Regional.

“The biggest thing we want to do is to make the playoffs,” said Clark, who is also the school’s boys’ soccer coach. “We have higher expectations coming into the year and now I know the players and they know what I’m expecting.

“We’ve brought in some more people to help strengthen the lineup near the bottom. The players are a lot more serious and we’ll look for some big things from them.”

Crescenta Valley’s top four athletes will be seniors Emily Redecker and Gloria Namkung and sophomores Cathlyn Junio and Vienna Bebla.

“It’s going to be a tough league again,” Clark, a former All-Area Boys’ Soccer Coach of the Year who piloted the Falcons to a CIF championship in 2012, said. “San Marino will be there because it returns the majority of its low scorers and Arcadia will always be good and then you can’t overlook a Burroughs team bringing back most of its group.

“We’ll get to the first or second league match and see how things stand. We can always hope to shoot for qualifying scores [as a team and individually].”

Crescenta Valley last qualified for the postseason in 2014, when it finished 13th at the CIF Southern Section Eastern Team Divisional at Jurupa Hills Country Club in Riverside County.

Flintridge Sacred Heart finished sixth the past two seasons in the competitive Mission League under Moore. Moore is the golf instructor at Monterey Park Golf Club in Monterey Park after previously serving as the head professional at Chevy Chase Country Club in Glendale for two-plus years.

The Tologs will return five players, including Denver Mackey, Shanley Galanto and Chloe Walter.

“We’d like to get up to third or fourth,” Moore said. “We’ve had a chance to develop out talent and bring in some more people, which is wonderful.”