The Arcadia High School (AHS) Varsity Girls Golf team recently won the CIF Division 1 Championship with an outstanding performance, reaching a huge milestone in school history. The girls were ecstatic when they found out about the news, as they were expecting to take home 4th or 5th place. 

Sophomore Zoe Sprecher, Senior and Team Captain Qiman Hu, and Senior and Team Captain Erica Lee shared how they felt about this accomplishment as a team and as individuals.

“Overall I felt really good about the results we had because we pretty much played to the best of our ability,” Sprecher shared.

The team talked about how they were up against very competitive schools including Troy High School, Muldrow High School, and Santa Margarita High School. The Apaches knew they had to give it their all in order to take home a trophy.

“When we heard the news of winning, we were very happy because we knew that we just won our CIF division two years in a row. Last year we were in Division 2, and when we won it raised us to Division 1,” Hu stated.

Lee also provided her thoughts: “I’m extremely proud of how we finished individually. It’s gonna be a very new experience. I think any of us has ever gotten here before, including the coach so it’ll be really cool.”

Hu, Sprecher, and Lee have all been on the team for at least a year now, so the experience of winning CIF was one of the most memorable experiences on the team.

Sprecher stated, “I’d say my most memorable experience is definitely winning the Division 1 Championship because it is a really big deal and I feel really happy with this accomplishment.” In contrast, both Hu and Lee had completely different responses compared to Sprecher.

“The most memorable experience is getting dinner with our team after every League match. I think it’s a great bonding experience between us and our coach and we always have a lot of fun,” expressed Lee.  

Being on a sports team usually means having mandatory and long practice hours, and students on an athletic team are often faced with the struggle of balancing classes, homework, and other extracurriculars. Fortunately, this is not the case for the girls golf team and they are given as much flexibility as needed by Coach Greep. Despite this, the girls shared the different methods they have to get homework done in an orderly fashion without wasting time. 

Hu describes, “Usually the way I schedule it is that I don’t try to procrastinate my work when I get home. The second I get home from school, I start working on homework. That way at night I can free up more time to practice and work on my game, it’s all about scheduling and time management.” 

Sprecher said, “Normally since most of our practice is optional …, I normally go to the library after 5th period and stay there until 4:30 to get as much homework done as possible. Then after there, I go out to go practice until around 7 or 7:30. Once practice is over, I go home, eat dinner, and do the rest of my homework like every day.” 

After winning the CIF Division 1 Championship, the girls reflected on themselves as individuals and as a team. In the wake of their success, they still focus on what they need to work on or improve on. 

Hu said, “With our busy schedules, a lot of the time we don’t get to play practice rounds before the tournament unless we’re gonna miss school. Instead, we could work on meeting together to pull up imagery of the courses that you can find online and we can talk about strategy or things we can watch out for before a match so that we’re all better prepared when we get to the tournament.” 

Conversely, Lee reflected, “I don’t think so actually, I think we have a good practice regimen before our matches and we take into priority how important these matches are. We just make sure that we perform to the best of our ability by preparing for it beforehand so I think we’re doing a pretty good job.”

Sprecher shared how she’d like to improve as an individual, “One thing I would like to improve on for future matches is definitely my putting because pretty much for most of my matches I always hit mid-approach shots into greens within a reasonable chance at birdie.”

Overall, the girls feel really proud of each other and themselves for their impressive win, both this year and last year, making it a record two-time CIF championship in the history of Apache sports. No doubt they’ll continue thriving as a team and getting better with each match. Congratulations Varsity Girls Golf Team on this amazing accomplishment and keep up the good work!