Reese Armstrong ’16

---

This year, Strake Jesuit has one of its most promising Varsity golf teams in recent memory.  The starting five consists of players who will not only excel in their time at Strake Jesuit, but also in the future.  Senior Ashton Radvansky has already committed to play at Bucknell next year, and a few Juniors have good college prospects.  With such an experienced and talented team, Jesuit really has a chance to prevail in the district tournament.

For the second year in a row, Strake is introducing a new head coach, Edward Lamy.  Having to adapt to a new coach so often has been a bit discouraging to some of the players, but fortunately, Coach Lamy appears to be sticking with this team for the long haul. It is clear that the team is a priority in his life, and he has done a great deal to enhance the golf program at SJ.  In fact, this weekend the top six players are traveling to Concan, a course right outside of San Antonio, for the first out of town tournament in several years. This is just one example of how our team has grown under the leadership of Coach Lamy.

As I said before, the team is extremely talented.  So far this year we’ve come close to winning several tournament, including a second place finish at River Ridge.  In addition, we posted an 18-hole, four player score of 302 at the fall district preview.  A score like that is good enough to win most tournament and definitely good enough to move forward from districts.  Looking back at all these scores, I see a great deal of success, but I also see room for improvement.  As Coach Lamy said, “the team has had some really good rounds, the biggest challenge for us is to play two of our best rounds back to back.”  If we can put together a two round score that matches the team’s potential, we could really do a lot of damage at the district tournament.

Despite the team’s exceptional ability, we belong to a very talented district.  According to Coach Lamy, our toughest opponent will definitely be Seven Lakes.  They will be extremely hard to beat at their best considering they won the fall and spring district previews.  With only two teams advancing to regionals, the second place spot will likely be between us and, with a good showing, we definitely have the potential to make it to regionals.

As for the golf team’s future, the practice facility at Strake Jesuit, which is already a luxury unique to our school, will be undergoing some exciting advancements before next year.  “The interior will be finished” said Coach Lamy, “and we will have a launch monitor, swing capture cameras and analysis software so we can diagram each player’s swing. Players will be able to see what might be causing poor contact and then go straight to a hitting station and work on a fix. It’s going to be a game changer for our program.” As great as the program already is, I can only see it improving from here.