Coach Rocky Parker has fielded some talented boys golf teams over the years at St. Margaret’s, but he said this season was the first time he had a team with right attitude to make history.
By design, golf is an individual sport with one player battling the course and the conditions. But this year, the Tartans, Parker said, put their drive to make their own headlines aside, so the team could be better.
They trusted in each other, he said, knowing that when one player was having on off day, someone else would be there to step up and help deliver a victory.
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Boys golf player of the year: Robert Deng, St. Margaret’s
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Hearing a coach talk about great chemistry has become cliché. But when Parker, the Register’s boys golf coach of the year, used it to describe a group that made it to the SCGA Southern California Championships for the first time in program history it seemed appropriate.
Even when a St. Margaret’s player posted a round in the 60s, he preferred talking about what the team had accomplished.
“These guys clicked as a team, and they are very cohesive,” Parker said. “That has been the difference.”
The Tartans came within one stroke of winning the CIF-SS South Coast Team Regional, finishing second to Corona del Mar with a score of 381. That score put the Tartans in the SCGA qualifying tournament in Desert Hot Springs, where they finished fourth with a score of 380 to earn the final, and historic, spot in the prestigious SCGA tournament in Pasadena.
“This has been an incredible year. It was all about doing things together. This team has been all a coach could ever want,” Parker said. “This team stepped up on every single opportunity. I couldn’t be happier.”
