Swingin' into the Boys' Golf Season
Despite losing three seniors from last year's varsity team, this year’s boys varsity golf program intends to waste no time in bringing more success to a storied program that has seen great success in recent years. This year’s varsity team features six members: captains Jack Gole and Tommy Hill, as well as Drew Covitt, Thomas Wong, Hunter Strah, and freshman Cooper Bryan. Coach Bert Kovarik will return as the head coach again this year. Junior capitan Tom Hill notes, “Coach Kovarik is a big help [in] providing specific input to each player for each hole on what they should do and how to improve. His knowledge and experience with the game is a big help.”
The team’s first real match took place on August 20 against West Geauga with some more upcoming matches against Chagrin and Trinity. The match against Chagrin is especially important, as they are typically Hawken’s golf’s main rivals. Fuel is added to the fire with the fact that Chagrin defeated Hawken in a match last year, which brought an end to Hawken’s four year undefeated streak in match play.
For this season, all members of the team made collective goals as well as personal goals. According to Captain Tom Hill, one such goal is breaking 300 meaning that on an 18 hole course, the top four performers on the team combine to score under 300 in a match. The team has already almost achieved this goal shooting 302 at the Trinity Invitational, which is a new school record. Another goal for the team is to break 160 in a match which is similar to the last goal except on a 9 hole course instead of 18 holes. The team also hopes to make it to States. To do so, the team must finish top three in sectionals and then top three in districts where some of their main competitors will be Gilmour and Notre Dame. They also hope to go undefeated in matches to repeat the successes of past years. In the preseason matches and tournaments that the team has participated in so far, they have seen great success. This first major success of the season would be the aforementioned school record at the Trinity Invitational. However, there have been some great individual performances by members of the team as well. At the Trinity Invitational, one of the team's best performances, Captain Jack Gole and Junior Drew Covitt both shot -1 through the 18 hole course, contributing a lot to the team's overall stellar performance. On the day, the team finished first overall in the standings. At the Badger Invitational, co-captains Gole and Hill also performed very well, placing first and second overall respectively with the team also placing first overall again. Also at the CVC tournament, Drew Covitt came in first place with Hill and Gole tying for second to give Hawken their third victory of the five preseason tournaments they participated in.
Both captains look forward to this year’s season confidently based on performances so far. Captain Tom notes that, “this year we have obviously improved on last year with breaking the record, but last year the team started hot but finished the year with some of our worst performances so we hope to remain consistent throughout the season.” Captain Jack Gole adds, “This year the guys have been putting a lot of work in over the summer, we have been attending a lot more tournaments, and having a lot more practices, which definitely has been paying off so far.” The team also looks forward to the biggest event that they attend this season, the Kiely Cup at Canterbury. Gole looks forward to this tournament stating, “The tournament will be a good chance for us to test ourselves versus some of the better teams in the state, and see how we match up against them if we do end up qualifying for states.”
With high hopes, the up and coming Hawken Golf team looks to have another productive year with all members of the varsity team having a hand in major wins this season. They look to build on a solid preseason and hopefully achieve some big things by the time the season comes to an end.