East High Golf - Monday, March 25, 2024

The boys golf season got underway on Monday, March 25, with the West High JV Invitational at Sim Park Golf Course.  It is widely known that East High golfers are simply tougher than golfers from other schools, so we were hoping some truly abysmal weather would roll in for the tournament, rendering helpless our feeble competition.

Thankfully we got our wish.  Allegedly the temperature was in the lower 40s when we teed off, but it felt much colder than that.  And by the end of the tournament, in addition to the cold, a heavy mist was coming down.  Because of the conditions, there was talk amongst the coaches of shortening the event.  But, with the image of the super-tough East High golfer in my mind, I told the other coaches, "you'll have to DRAG my golfers off this course.  They live for this!"

Okay, that last quote never happened.  I personally was miserable.  And to be honest, most of the golfers (from all schools) were miserable.  Regarding the weather, the quote of the tournament belongs to junior Arri Reilly.  When I asked him how he was feeling, he said, with teeth chattering, "I can't heel my fands."  We probably shouldn't have been playing, it was that horrendous.

And despite that, our golfers truly DID show some toughness out there, resulting in our best showing as a team in my time as the coach.  As a team, East High shot a nine-hole total of 206, 29 shots better than the second-place finishers from Northwest.  And individually, all five of our golfers finished in the top ten, a truly remarkable accomplishment for our program.

Sophomore Hagen Shane was one golfer (and maybe the only one) who was unaffected by the elements.  He played the entire round in short sleeves, possibly creating an aura of invincibility that the other golfers could just feel.  Hagen won the tournament with a 10-over par 45.

The nature of this particular tournament is that there are a lot of inexperienced players, and we as coaches are asked to stay with one or two groups to assist the newer players with the nuances of high school golf.  So there were two East High golfers that I saw a LOT more than the others.  One of them was freshman Kyran Shane (Hagen's brother).  Kyran's high school career started with a straight-as-an-arrow drive of about 240 yards that landed in the fairway.  I think he felt the confidence of that first shot throughout his round, and he finished with a score of 48, good for second place overall.

Sophomore Alec Gatzulis, a student from Northeast Magnet, gave me a hard time yesterday because I wasn't getting to see him play, and I wish I had seen him because he had a nice round.  He got off to a rough start, but eventually settled in, finishing his round with five straight bogeys.  He shot a score of 54, putting him in fifth place.

The other golfer I saw a lot of yesterday was junior Arri Reilly.  He had a bit of an up-and-down day (probably because of his cold fands), but still managed to finish seventh with a score of 59.

There was one East High golfer that I didn't get to see at all, and that was junior Ismail Saeed (sorry Ismail).  Ismail showed up in shorts, making me think he was also going for the image of invincibility,  That was not the case.  He was cold, and soon after arrival, changed into pants, which helped him shoot a 62.  Ismail's score was good enough for a tenth-place finish.  For complete tournament results, click here.

I was super-proud of our guys, for lots of reason, but mainly because they didn't complain much about the miserable conditions, and they simply did their best despite the circumstances.  The results were astounding.  I can't imagine a more positive start to our season.