Summer is the perfect time to rediscover forgotten courses in the desert
Rediscovering golf courses can be part of golf’s charm in the hot summer months
It is an annual question in high school sports in the Coachella Valley: Can any team possibly catch the Palm Desert High School girls’ golf team in the regular season?
Twenty-six times in the last 27 years, the Aztecs have gone undefeated in league. As the girls’ golf season begins this week, the Aztecs would seem to be the favorite again in the Desert Empire League with a team of returning seniors and strong underclassmen.
“It’s different. There is more pressure when there are expectations,” said Chuck Mazet, in his first year as head coach of the Palm Desert girls after coaching the school’s boys team last spring. “The fact that we are expected to win, there is definitely pressure. You can’t have a bad day.”
Mazet knows that other teams in the DEL, particularly La Quinta with its star senior Joanna Bushnell Crist, can push the Aztecs this year. Bushnell Crist enters the year with exciting news of her own. The two-time DEL individual champion has verbally committed to play college golf next year at Fresno State.
“I am so excited and so happy,” said Bushnell Crist, who won the DEL titles during her freshman and junior seasons. “Coach (Mary) Ritchie over there, she is amazing. I met her for coffee at PGA West, and we just hit it off.”
Bushnell Crist, who said she spent the summer playing plenty of tournament golf, will certainly be in contention for the league individual title again. But Palm Desert might have a deeper team, something that has traditionally been the case for the Aztecs. That begins with Sophia Waddell, who transferred into Palm Desert before last season and who finished second to Bushnell Crist in the DEL individual finals last year.
“I’m excited. I’m captain this year. Me and another girl (Amelia Candari), so we basically get to be in charge of the team along with coach Mazet. I’m just really excited. I think this year will be good, too.”
Candari, also beginning her senior year, tries to worry about something other than the expectations.
“I’m really coming to this year just to make the most of it and have fun,” Candari said. “Obviously, winning is a positive, but it definitely is a lot better to have fun on the course than it is to win all the time.”
Also expected to make a major contribution to the Aztecs this year is sophomore Chelsea Weiss, who saw plenty of time on the course as a freshman last year.
“I definitely improved over the summer,” Weiss said. “I’m just excited to get back at it with the team, excited for the year.”
The Aztecs may get stronger at some point during the year, as the team waits for the CIF-Southern Section to approve the transfer of Hannah Bagnell from La Quinta to Palm Desert. Bagnell, a junior, won the DEL individual championship as a freshman when she played for Xavier Prep.
While Mazet hopes the leaders of the Aztecs will help instill the culture of winning, La Quinta head coach Mark Williams says he and his team are trying to establish a culture of their own.
“I’d say it is an exciting time for our team and to be a Blackhawk golfer,” Williams said. “We have a lot of growth in our program, a lot of perks now and opportunities for growth and to get better. We have an off-season program now that we started this year. We’ve been working all summer. We started two weeks after the boys season ended (in the spring), and we have been going pretty much ever since.”
