Cactus Shadows girls golf team ready for title run
Mark O’Bryan is in his 10th season as head coach of the Cactus Shadows high school girls golf team.
During that time, he’s won three AIA Division II state championships and now leads a Falcons team that, this season, has a good chance to win the title for a fourth time when the D-II girls championship begins Monday.
O’Bryan, 60, never thought that he would become a golf coach or a teacher. O’Bryan was running his own grocery route business up until about 15 years ago. But when he saw there was a teacher shortage, he became curious.
He reached out to his younger sister, now a 7th grade math teacher in the Deer Valley Unified School District, about how he could get involved. O’Bryan earned his accreditation and started teaching when he was 46, a decision he described as “the last thing in my mid-life crisis.”
But the job was difficult for the O’Bryan at first.
“I thought about quitting after my very first year. But, on the last day of school, this kid wrote me a letter and I read the letter and I just said ‘Well, I can’t quit now,’” he recalled.
Over time, O’Bryan became used to the classroom while teaching at Cactus Shadows High School. Eventually, he became interested in possibly coaching boys golf. He loved the game and had played in junior college.
“I had expressed to my principal that I’d like to be a golf coach,” O’Bryan said. “He said, ‘Well, there aren’t any openings,’ and things like that.”
Eventually, an opening did materialize for the girls team in 2011 and he was offered that job.
“I never had daughters. So I was like, ‘Girls, I don’t know. I don’t know anything about them,’ “he recalled.
O’Bryan accepted the job and quickly realized that coaching girls golf was a good move. The girls on the team were good students, brought a mature attitude to the sport and he found coaching the team ”a lot of fun.”
“I don’t know if you’ve ever been around a bunch of girls, it’s pretty entertaining, for lack of a better word,” he said.
O’Bryan emulated the principles of Hall of Fame college basketball coach John Wooden when he started coaching the team. He also learned the importance of having fun and being liked by his athletes.
These philosophies
O’Bryan’s coaching style.
“Human nature says that if they like you, they’ll work harder for you,” O’Bryan
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said. “If you have a boss you really like, you’re going to work harder for them.”
When O’Bryan took over the program, Cactus Shadows had just three players on their roster. They had won four state championships, but the team had fallen on harder times.
It took a few seasons, but hard work and good fortune eventually guided the Falcons to winning three state championships in a row, with last season’s second place finish breaking the streak.
“Our school has just been really lucky and blessed that we’ve had this stretch of when a player leaves another will come in,” O’Bryan said. “I have never ever used the word win. All I ever tell them is, ‘Are you better today than you were yesterday?’ “
A Texas-sized addition
After coming away with their third straight state title in ’18, the Falcons entered a season with a clear No.1 golfer on their team. Rising junior Kylee Loewe, an Arizona native known for her fiery competitiveness, was, at least according to O’Bryan, Cactus Shadows’ best player.
But one email from the mother of a young golfer from Texas, who happened to be in the same grade as Loewe, changed all that. Her name was Calynne Rosholt, and she was about to become the best high school girls golf player O’Bryan had ever worked with when she moved to Arizona and Cactus Shadows in 2019. “She is a machine,” O’Bryan said of Rosholt, now a senior. “Her game is basically flawless.”
Golf is in Rosholt’s blood.
Her mother was a member of Arizona State’s 1990 national championship team and grew up playing with Phil Mickelson. Her sister, Chandler Rosholt, now plays golf at Auburn.
Even when Rosholt was little, according to her mother, her head would perk up anytime she was in the car and drove by a golf course. She was about 6 years old when she started playing .
“I’ve got a putting green in my backyard now,” Rosholt said. “I have this putting mirror where I can check my shoulders, so I just use it to get (down) the technique of my golf game.”
Rosholt says that moving to Arizona wasn’t the easiest of transitions, describing herself as an introvert.
But just prior to moving, Rosholt was greeted by O’Bryan and Loewe at the PING Heather Farr Classic in Mesa. She and Loewe became close friends. “The coach and Kylee Loewe came out and I was like, ‘ Who is this?’ “Rosholt said.
When Rosholt officially joined the program, any concerns of the team’s two stars potentially butting heads never materialized.
As Rosholt describes it, it was Loewe’s outgoing personality that helped Rosholt feel comfortable being on the team.“When Calynne showed up, (Kylee) embraced her,” O’Bryan said. “Those two are like twins now.”
From Loewe’s perspective, Rosholt fit in perfectly. “The second she joined out team she fit right in,” Loewe said. “She’s one of my best friends.”
Rosholt and Loewe aren’t exactly the same. O’Bryan views Rosholt as more selective in the tournaments she decides to play in.
But ultimately, the Falcons’ two star golfers maintain a fiery competitive streak while also fitting in as two of the more playful members on the team.
“They’re usually the ones laughing and joking the most,” O’Byran said. “I don’t have enough superlatives to describe the dynamics they have with the rest of the team.”