Freshmen

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Although it may seem like an accident that I stumbled across Kevin Metz’s girls’ golf preview in the Register, the truth is that I actually tried for two days to read it. No, it wasn’t because it was so poorly written, which it wasn’t, it was because South Orange County’s internet and cable television problems with Cox (‘your friend in the digital age’) made web service wonky; it wasn’t until Wednesday that I was finally able to reel in the story on my company-issued laptop.

The gist of the preview is that there are a lot of freshman golfers who are going to make an immediate impact on the sport and their teams.

That’s certainly true, not only in golf, but throughout girls’ sports (and to a lesser extent boys’ sports). Having covered Southern Section girls’ basketball since 1993, as well as softball, it seems that every new class raises the level of play throughout the sport. It adds to the ‘haves and have-nots’ disparity as well. Those athletes who come from the strong feeder programs -- or in golf’s case, the country club suburbs -- improve the quality of an athletic program, while schools that do not have access to such inherent infrastructure can’t keep pace.

The best players on a team are becoming younger and younger, with freshmen increasingly become the key figures in a team’s title hopes.

- Martin Henderson