Waukon girls golf team returns trio of letterwinners for 2016 season
Left to right: Leslie Sivesind, Kayla Palmer, Bailey Farley.
The Waukon girls golf team will benefit from a trio of returning veterans as the 2016 gets underway. That trio each took turns leading the Indian charge at different times throughout last season, with two of them returning with All-Conference honors to their credit from the end of last season.
Senior Leslie Sivesind and juniors Bailey Farley and Kayla Palmer each return with veteran experience from last spring, with Farley and Sivesind each playing to finishes within the Northeast Iowa Conference’s (NEIC) top-15 players from last season, and being just two of a half dozen returning from that NEIC elite this spring. “I look to them for leadership and to add to our team strength,” Waukon girls golf coach Kathy McMillan said of that veteran trio.
Coach McMillan lists that team strength as the depth her squad fields this season. “My strength is eight players I can put out on the course to fill six spots on the varsity squad,” she said.
Helping forge that depth with that returning trio is another up and coming trio furthering their experience on the links, as well as another first-year competitor who enjoys the game. “(Sophomores) Carley Sweeney and Kylee Hager, and (junior) Annika Anderson played a lot of summer golf and have lowered their scores considerably; I will be looking to them for filling the holes from last year,” explained Coach McMillan. “A surprise for the team is first-year-out junior Caitlin Shelton. She is showing good golf skills and great commitment to practice.”
The holes Coach McMillan refers to were left from the graduation of Katelyn Kolsrud, Kelsey Cota, Jenny Bartling and Samantha Swartz. Along with gaps left by that considerable group of graduates, Coach McMillan says her charges will need to, specifically, sharpen their short game, while bringing an overall general feeling of success to the course. “To have a successful season, I need my girls to have complete confidence and attitude, great team chemistry, to practice hard and to play golf,” she said.
Coach McMillan says at the top of her team’s list of goals is to bring the Northeast Iowa Conference championship back to Waukon, but she sees defending champion New Hampton as forging another formidable challenge to achieving that goal. “They still will be strong, along with Decorah,” she projected.
The coach is optimistic about her team’s start to the early season. “This has been a great season opener with being on the course already for a week and a half,” Coach McMillan said. “We have had all outdoor practices and normally we don’t have any playing time outside before our first meet. The girls are liking this and are always ready to go play golf.”
Also adding to that optimism is the assistance provided to the team by former Indian multi-year All-Conference player and State Tournament qualifier, 2011 Waukon High School graduate Morgan McMillan, who has also now completed a strong collegiate career at Wartburg. “With her expertise and experience, she is a great asset to our coaching staff as a volunteer,” the McMillan matriarch said.
The Indians were scheduled to get their season underway with three meets in their opening week on the links this week before playing another pair of back-to-back meets to start next week. That string of five meets within just over a week’s time will make up about half of the Indians’ season schedule, which is printed below.
