ORANGE – Charmaine Summers looked out the window of Watson Drugs and Soda Fountain at the group of high school girls spanning two tables eating lunch, chatting and giggling.
The group, more than 20, is the El Modena High girls golf team. Four years ago, there was no team.
“Golf to me is a lifelong gift,” Summers said. “I tell them, ‘You’re taking up golf now, but this is for the rest of your life, your future with your family, your friends – not just high school.’ For me that’s a reward – just getting girls into this sport.”
The Vanguards are 2-1 – already double the win total from the program’s first two seasons after it was re-established.
There is a bigger picture for the budding program than a winning season, Summers said.
“The first two years, especially if they’re green, they’re training,” she said. “The first year is training and learning and experimenting and really just hanging in there because it’s not an easy game to start with. And then the second year is the year where they should be developing their game, because first they have to learn the game. And by the junior year, they should be able to see some better scoring.”
Just ask Brittney Carroll. If there’s one player on the team who represents the direction El Modena’s program is heading, it’s the team’s leading scorer.
A lifelong softball player, Carroll didn’t begin to play golf regularly until seventh grade, when she started joining her dad at the driving range.
“It was hard, but when I actually hit it really well I would scream,” said Carroll, a junior. “I would scream so bad like, ‘I did it, I did it!’ because in softball you cheer a lot for your team. You’re loud in softball and I was so used to being loud, and my dad was like you have to be really quiet in golf and patient.”
Carroll loved it so much that she stopped softball in eighth grade and started taking weekly golf lessons. That’s where she met Summers – at the Orange County Golf Academy.
Coincidentally Summers, who took over the boys team in spring of 2012, was in the process of starting El Modena’s girls’ golf team, after receiving permission from administration to rebuild a program that lay dormant for more than a decade.
Because she was one of the few girls with any experience, albeit limited, Carroll played varsity as a freshman in the team’s first year. She typically shot in the 60s in the nine-hole matches that first year; the team didn’t win a match.
After two seasons, Carroll’s improvements are dramatic. She hits the ball consistently straight and has a commanding short game.
“She started out green and now she’s shooting in the 40s, and that’s kind of exciting,” Summers said. “She works with me also on the side, which is helpful, too. She shows team spirit, she’s a good teammate and she just represents El Modena in a great way.”
Carroll can’t seem to say enough about what golf has done for her. It’s taught her patience, self-restraint and to be calm under pressure, she said. It’s brought her closer to her father – they still golf almost every weekend – whom she calls her best friend.
“She beats me consistently every time now,” Scott Carroll said. “She’s very competitive.”
Brittney Carroll’s personality still seems more befitting of a softball dugout than a golf course at times, but that’s one of the reasons she helps stitch the fabric of the young team so well. She’s friends with everyone. Even other teams greet her when El Modena shows up to matches.
She’s also an indicator of where the freshmen could be to be in two years.
“She’s a leader and a role model of being green and being able to take this game to the next level if you have determination,” Summers said.
Summers loves to encourage that sort of motivation. This season she instituted a new program on the team called “Big Sis Little Sis” that partners varsity and junior varsity players. Occasionally, Summers will forgo practice to have both squads sit together for lunch at Watsons. It allows younger players to look to their older peers such as Carroll as resources.
“It definitely motivates me,” said Carroll, after the team’s lunch on Thursday. “It shows that if I’m shooting in my 40s this is going to inspire them to get better every day.”
That Carroll works with the less-experienced girls rather than noting the disparity between them is exactly what Summers wants.
“My thing is entertaining everyone to come out and try golf,” Summers said, “to build a team that possibly could win, but most importantly for these girls to have fun and enjoy their four years of golf.”
High school golf has spurred Carroll to set even more ambitious goals. She wants to play golf in college – she’s shooting for a scholarship – and maybe even try to play professionally someday. One thing is certain: She’ll be playing golf for as long as she can.
“Definitely forever,” she assured.
Contact the writer: 7147-704-3796 or mhanlon@ocregister.com
