Panthers show steady improvement
Team falls 281-316 to Union
After dropping 53 strokes against Tulare Western in Tulare last week, Porterville High School girls golf replicated there much improved score in a 281-316 loss to Tulare Union in Tuesday’s East Yosemite League match at River Island Country Club.
For PHS head coach David Herrera, the score was indicative of how the team has improved.
“I think it’s maybe one of our better scores but I see a lot of the actual swing, the playing, [it’s] getting better,” Herrera said. “Sometimes the score really, really shows we’re getting better and I can kind of see that we’re getting better. Just like my No. 1 (Angela Eugene) she got a 54 but she got an 11 on a par-3 [hole]. If she just cleans that up a little bit — she got stuck in the sand and she went sand, sand. So she kind of had a blow-up hole. If she would’ve had a normal score for that hole, she would’ve broke 50 and shot in the high 40s, which is one of her goals. It’s definitely going the direction we want it to go.”
Eugene led the Panthers (0-3 EYL) with her score of 54 and was followed by No. 3 Dora Jimenez with a 62, No. 2 Aunika Marquez with a 64, No. 6 Catherine Entenman with a 68 and No. 5 Uniese Carrilo with a 69.
“It’s a good score,” Herrera said. “One of my goals is always to break 300, so a 60 average. If every girl shoots a 60 that’s 300. So we’re trying to get below a 60 average. I mean we’re close. It’s just a decision here — aim a little more this way and you shave four or five strokes off. Easy. Do that a couple times in a round.”
Mistakes weren't limited to Jimenez and Herrera believes that with a little bit of tweaking and strategy, the team's scores will continue to drop.
“And that's actually for several of the girls who are kind of like, all we have to do is clean up one shot here, one shot there and it drastically changes the scorecard,” Herrera said. “I had one girl, she got stuck behind a tree and she hit four into the same tree. And it's like, ‘All you had to do was get around the tree.' So little things, little
things like that that we're still trying to focus on. And some of that just takes experience. They realize that, ‘Oh I shouldn't have done this, I should've done that.' And that there's a lot of strategy in golf.”
Also for Porterville, No. 4 Kayla Johnson carded an 87 against the Tribe but Herrera chalked the high score up to her not playing with her clubs.
“It's not quite fair because I lost her clubs and she had to use someone else's clubs,” Herrera said. “So it's my fault that she shot that. She was not too happy.”
With most of the team's golfers in the high school band and needing to attend the Panthers' football game on Thursday, Porterville is set to play again today at 4 p.m. at River Island Country Club against Delano in another EYL match.