Pasha Farmanara, Web Editor-in-Chief
The boys’ JV golf team has recently been forced to forfeit many of their matches due to a lack of players. They fail to reach the five player minimum required to play a match.
The golf program as a whole has 10 players, and the varsity sometimes takes six players to their matches, leaving the JV team with four players.
The JV players are very disheartened about having to throw away matches.
“It’s very disappointing, because we feel very confident about ourselves, but we need to forfeit due to a lack of players. We are able to play, we aren’t bad or anything, there just isn’t enough people,” said freshman Josh Masjedi.
Forfeiting matches has been disappointing, and some players are noticing a loss of morale among players on the team.
“I think it decreases everyone’s motivation after forfeiting a match, some people think it is not important to practise if we are going to forfeit matches,” said Masjedi.
Masjedi is not the only one noticing the decline in motivation. Freshman Nick Choi, who plays both JV and varsity, also noticed.
“When the JV team has to forfeit it brings down the team and they will eventually lose interest,” said Choi.
Freshman Alexander Ghavami, a JV player, feels like the JV team is not taken seriously enough.
“The varsity team gets to take six players, while the JV team is left with four, and forced to forfeit. If the players were to be split five to five, the JV team would put more effort into their game. It would show the coaches care more about the JV team,” Ghavami said.
To help make sure future teams won’t have to suffer as they have, some players have spoken to middle school students, and exposing them to golf.
“We ask friends if they know younger kids who play golf, and ask if they are interested in joining the team,” Choi said, “We should schedule some sort of speech at middle schools to make sure they know the truth about golf, so they don’t think it is only for rich, nerdy kids.”
Ghavami also thinks the golf team needs to be “more attractive.”
“As an incoming freshmen, I didn’t even know about the golf team. I had to go out and ask if it existed,” said Ghavami.
The JV golf team is now 1-1 in league, after splitting two matches with Palos Verdes. The team is moving on to play SAMO next week, hopefully with enough players.
Feel free to leave a comment, giving the golf team ideas on how to publicize the team and make it appeal more to future students.