On August 14th, 2013, the beginning of the fall sports season in Harford County began, with a new start for Bel Air’s Golf Team. The team welcomed two new female golfers, junior Sam Barnett and sophomore Spencer Comitz. This season the golf team has 13 members, 4 of which are female – the most in school history.
Last year, only two girls, Rachel Lozzi and Gracie Brett, were on the golf team that consisted of 14 members. Sam Barnett is a new golfer, recently picking up a club for the first time. Spencer Comitz, a transfer from John Carroll, started golfing the beginning of her freshman year and practices with her dad almost every day. Comitz was the only girl on her golf team last year at John Carroll. Comitz thought that, “playing with girls is so much more fun. Golfing with all boys can add a lot more pressure.”
Being some of the only girls in a male-dominated sport can be challenging. Bel Air has the largest number of girl golfers in the county so encountering others females is rare. So far, Bel Air has played against only a few teams with girls, such as Aberdeen, C. Milton Wright, and Perryville High School. Every time we arrive at the course for a match, we are always on the lookout for other girls to play against. It’s easier to play against fellow girls for innumerable reasons: you feel less judged, have less anxiety, feel less pressure to always have the perfect shot, have more in common, more to talk and bond over, and there’s the well-known fact that boys have cooties.
In addition to being out on the course, the golf girls enjoy other recreational team-building activities. We all drive to practice in one of the girl’s truck, with all four of our golf bags in the pickup’s bed, making all the crucial snack stops, for either Slurpees or Taco Bell. We’ve gone to Chipotle, to get frozen yogurt, and the mall. If you spend hours walking and talking in a group of four, it makes for a fairly tight knit group. The team has a different dynamic this year compared to the last. The boys and girls talk with each other more and are less divided. The team went to Sweet Frog after one of their recent matches, and even though it was all girls and just one boy, we’re making progress.
Rachel Lozzi elaborates, “We spend a lot of time together; it isn’t one of those sports where you don’t talk or do any activities at all outside of practice. We’re really close and can talk about anything- actually we exclude anyone who doesn’t golf… Just kidding.”
Coaches Mr. Doyle and Mrs. Donaldson really hope that more girls will get involved with golf and the participants will grow. Sometime in the near future the program may have many competitive girl golfers on every team, or enough to split up into separate, gender-based teams.
“I just want to be able to grow the program with girls who are interested and willing to learn the game,” Coach Doyle explains, “You’re basically learning a lifelong sport, so the idea is that you not necessarily go out there and win all the time, but just to learn something and have fun with it.”
Having 4 girls on a golf team can be challenging at times but definitely rewarding. I don’t think it’s so bad to play like a girl after all.