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Girls’ Golf Preview: Familiar faces dot area teams

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The Orange County high school girls’ golf season is here, and the area is again loaded with top talent, led by Sage Hill School.

Lightning assistant coach Kerwin Walters is excited about this year’s team, which includes seniors Mary Shin and Angela Wu, along with sophomores Ashleigh Park and Jennifer Cai.

Shin claimed the Academy League individual title in 2016 and then shot a one-under-par 70 to finish second at the CIF Southern Section Southern Individual Regional tournament at Dad Miller Golf Course in Anaheim.

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As a team, the Lightning clinched the league title, shooting a school-record 177 during a match against Crean Lutheran at Irvine’s Strawberry Farms Golf Club. Cai led the way with a round of 30 and Park shot 33, Wu 35 and Shin 36. The quartet returns for 2017, and as a result Sage Hill has big plans for the fall.

“It’s going to be worth the press, just watching them to see what they can do,” Walters said of this year’s team.

Sage Hill has a new head coach this year — Bruce Loman, who takes over for Andy Browning, who Walters said is a new dad.

Loman worked in sales for Callaway Golf for nearly 30 years and was a head golf professional for a private club in Connecticut.

Sage Hill isn’t the only local program with big expectations this season.

Huntington Beach, which went undefeated in winning the Sunset League for the third straight year last fall, has opened its season with three victories earlier this week, coach Melanie McCaffery said.

Last fall, sophomore Vanessa Betancourt shot a three-over 74 to tie for 14th at Dad Miller and reached the CIF-SS Individual Championship at Western Hills, where she shot 81, McCaffery said.

Betancourt, whose strength is her mental approach, earned first-team all-league honors, McCaffery said,

“She does not have a lot of super highs or super lows,” McCaffery said. Other players to watch are senior Dylin Myers, junior Taylor Paulson and freshman Keely Tang, according to McCaffery.

Myers has verbally committed to play collegiately at Weber State University.

“Our team has always had a lot of depth,” McCaffery said.

Corona del Mar High tied for fifth in last year’s CIF Southern Division Team Championship, but did not earn one of the top three spots into the CIF-SS Team Qualifier for the state regional tournament.

CdM returns multiple players from last year’s team, creating a squad Coach Mike Starkweather called “balanced.”

“A lot of girls could be the medalist at any time,” Starkweather said.

Alyaa Abdulghany, the 2015 CIF state champion, graduated, but CdM includes several returners this season, led by juniors Celine Niu, Sydney Sharf and Payton Campbell. Junior Cameron Griffin will be a new player to this year’s team, moving to the area from Las Vegas.

The late-season league and CIF tournaments will be the focus for local players teams, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t intrigue in the coming weeks.

Sage Hill and Huntington Beach will square off at 3 p.m. Thursday at Strawberry Farms, and CdM will open its season against Back Bay rival Newport Harbor at 2:30 p.m. Sept. 7 at Newport Beach Country Club.

bryce.alderton@latimes.com

Twitter: @AldertonBryce

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