The Nipomo High School girls’ golf team appeared to be primed for a climactic, successful 2016 fall season—until an unexpected crisis hit.
“We had eight returning players. We were going to be strong,” Jim Delaby, head coach of the team, said. “Then, we lost half of them. Three girls moved out of the area. We didn’t really have a team.”
All of a sudden, the future of Nipomo’s team rode on the efforts of the few returning players, like senior Brooke Cuzick, to recruit new teammates over the summer.
That was not an easy undertaking—or an easy pitch, in the case of girls’ golf.
“There’s not a lot of interest in girls’ golf in our area,” Cuzick told the Sun.
But thanks to their persistence, the girls found just enough students to join the squad to make the team viable.
“It was just us working together to reach out. We worked a lot through social media,” Cuzick said. “We talked to people who don’t have any sport to play. A lot of quieter kids.”
The crisis was averted, though the expectations for Nipomo’s season are much different now. But the program’s recent turmoil isn’t likely to throw a talent like Cuzick off the fairway.
Cuzick proved herself to be one of the best golfers in the Los Padres League (LPL) last year. She finished second in the LPL in her junior season, and qualified for the CIF’s individual playoff tournament.
“Last year, I started out the season really well, then my mental game went downhill. I lost my first place position,” she said. “This season, I’d like my overall game to stay consistent and hang on to that No. 1 spot.”
Cuzick first picked up a club when she was in eighth grade, following in the footsteps of her older sister.
“I didn’t really have a sport that I clung to [before golf],” she said. “My sister picked up golf when she was in high school. Since I didn’t have a sport, I just decided to try it.”
Five years later, Cuzick finds herself playing varsity high school golf as a nice break from a more intense environment at the Ventura County Junior Golf Academy, a program she joined two years ago to start pursuing college golf. Even for an accomplished young golfer like Cuzick, getting the attention of college coaches is difficult.
“College golf is something I’d really like to do, but getting recruited is so much harder than I thought,” she said. “It’s extremely competitive; there’s so many great golfers out there.”
This article appears in Aug 25 – Sep 1, 2016.
