Consistency is key: Girls’ golf team undefeated

Senior Sanjna Verma took a deep breath, cleared her mind and focused on the ninth hole. A small swing back and a clean follow-through pushed the ball straight into the hole for a par 3 on Sept. 17 during a match against Leland High School. Exasperated, her opponent flung her club at the ground for the third time that day.

That’s the kind of frustration that is mounting for opponents of the girls’ golf team halfway through their eight-week season. The Falcons’ record is 9-0 as of Oct. 7.

The players attribute their success to daily practice.
Verma believes that most of the other teams in the Blossom Valley Athletic league are less consistent. Their No. 1 and No. 2 players shoot very low scores, “but numbers four, five and six shoot in the high 50s and 60s,” Verma said.

The girls play nine holes in matches. All six players that compete regularly for Saratoga High get scores in the 40s and low 50s.

“That helps us a lot because that way we don’t have any outliers,” Verma added.

The team underwent radical changes last season, which included a new coach, home course and routine.

“It also helped that coach had tryouts last year, and only the top six played in matches,” No. 1 player senior Samika Kumar said. “We were always competing against each other for spots, and we’re all really dedicated.”

This is the first time the team has won more than five matches in a row.

“We’re getting very consistent play from everybody,” Coach Dave Gragnola said. “Some of our players could even go lower and have better scores, but so far, because of our consistently decent scores, we’re beating everybody else.”

While the team may not make it to CCS as a whole, several players—seniors Kumar, Verma, Sara Pettersson, junior Sachi Verma, sophomore Vivian Roan and freshman Ankitha Sarvesh—are expected to qualify individually.

Gragnola believes that the team has “a good chance of tying [with Leland] or winning the [Blossom Valley Athletic] League.”

Kumar feels that the players “had a lot of potential at the end of last season because everyone was so dedicated.”
Because the girls spend nearly every day practicing together, they have become much closer to each other.

“We’re like one big family,” freshman Ankitha Sarvesh said. “We have a lot of fun out there.”

A winning streak isn’t quite good enough for Gragnola, however.

“I want to get that ‘Girls’ Golf’ banner [for a CCS Championship] hanging up on the wall of the gymnasium,” he said. “That’s my goal for this season.”