Southampton Girls Golf Continues To Pile Up Victories

The Southampton girls golf team started this season just as it left off last season, forging ahead with victories and vying for another league title.

The Mariners, which also include Pierson and Ross School student-athletes currently on the junior varsity level, won their eighth straight match to start the season on Monday with a 6.5-2.5 victory over Shoreham-Wading River at The Woods at Cherry Creek Golf Course in Riverhead, a match that was called early due to inclement weather.

Winning is nothing new, though, for a program that has consistently done so ever since it joined the varsity ranks a few years ago.

Ella Coady, a junior and reigning Suffolk County champion, has continued to lead the way for Southampton, consistently shooting in the low 40s. She shot her lowest score of the season, a 41, in a victory over Ward Melville on April 27, which head coach Edgar “Hikey” Franklin said was impressive given a few factors: the weather wasn’t particularly kind, he said, and it was just the team’s second home match of the season at Bridgehampton Golf Club, which they hadn’t had much time to practice on prior to their first home matches last week.

“Ella Coady, she’s our number one, she’s our horse, and she’s definitely on another level right now and playing really well,” first-year coach Franklin said. “With the conditions that we’ve been playing in, and for her to shoot the scores that she’s shooting, she’s just been phenomenal.

“And this has been a true spring, end-of-winter sports season. It’s been cold, with 30 mph winds at times, and even at our home course in Bridgehampton, which is a beautiful course, some of the pins in the green have bent over because it’s been so windy. A few of the coaches and I thought about canceling last week’s matches because it was so brutally cold and windy, but we decided to play, and the girls gutted it out. But it hasn’t been the most favorable golf conditions so far.”

Coady said she has certainly felt the pressure of being the No. 1 golfer in the county, whereas last season she was able to fly under the radar a bit until her big county title victory. But she’s not shying away from that pressure.

“It’s definitely a new layer of stress with everyone expecting me now to play as a number one, but I think I’m handling it all well,” she said. “I’m hitting the ball farther. I’ve tightened up my short game, my chips have gotten a lot better. But the other girls on the other teams have certainly grown with me, and I’m happy to see them grow with me. I don’t think anything has gotten easier, since a lot of the girls have gotten better, also.”

Franklin said that while Coady has been leading the way, the team has been solid throughout the lineup, including senior Caroline Wilutis and her younger sister Georgia, a sophomore. Caroline’s low on the season is a 38 through eight holes in the season opener on April 4, while Georgia’s low is a 31 through six holes.

“The whole team is really playing well considering the hand it’s been dealt with the weather and everything,” Franklin said. “But our four through eight girls, any one of them could step up any day. There’s really not a weak link anywhere.”

Wilutis said Franklin has been a nice addition to the team. Even though he’s a first-year coach for the girls golf team, his brings a wealth of experience from being a caddie at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club for years, and that’s something they haven’t had recently, she said.

“He’s been really great. It’s nice to have him, because he knows golf from a different perspective from our previous coaches,” she explained. “He can tell us what we should be playing based on our game or the weather, and he can tell us what he thinks we can hit, and that’s been really great.”

In a bit of a scheduling oddity, Southampton is slated to play Sachem, the only other undefeated team in League IV, in back-to-back matches next week, on May 10 and 12, which will most likely determine which team wins the league title, or at least a share of it. Typically, matches against the same team are spread out throughout the season, and Franklin said it was odd the way it worked out, but his team has to play the schedule it’s given.

“No matter when you play them, you’ve got to beat them, so, hopefully, we’ve got better conditions when we do play them,” he said.

Coady and Wilutis are looking forward to the challenge that Sachem will present them. Coady isn’t feeling any added pressure: “Every match means everything to us, so I don’t think we look at any team differently. We just need to go out there and win.”

“I agree that all of the matches are important, like Ella said. At the same time, usually, whoever comes out on top in these matches wins the league,” Wilutis added. “I know last year we were 1-1 with them. It’ll be interesting to see.”

Southampton had three matches scheduled prior to those final two matches against Sachem. After playing Shoreham again on Wednesday, the Mariners are scheduled to host Mount Sinai in Bridgehampton on Thursday, April 5, at 3 p.m., and then will play Riverhead on Monday, May 9, at Cherry Creek at 3:15 p.m. The first Sachem match, the next day, will be played in Bridgehampton at 3:15 p.m., and the final match of the regular season will be played May 12 at Middle Island Country Club at 3:15 p.m.