The 2021 girls golf team has hit a record number of players this year.

The Bishop Noll girls golf team has seen a decent amount of players in years past. This year, however, Alexa Hogueisson, girls golf coach, had a turnout like no other. Hogueisson has played golf competitively since high school and has been coaching BNI’s team for two years now. “Last year we had a team of seven and this year we have reached seventeen which is almost unheard of for a high school girls golf team,” Hogueisson said. “I have never seen or been part of a team this large before.” Golf was always a big part of Alexa’s life growing up, and she’s always thought about coaching. “Golf is a male dominated sport and many women’s scholarships go unused because there are not enough young players interested, and I wanted to show them those opportunities,” she said. Because of last year’s fairly small team, the coaching staff was at first nervous coaching a team two times the size of last year’s turnout. Surprisingly, Hogueisson said that a large team is quite advantageous because of all the support towards girls at practice and matches. However, she does know the downfall of a large team. A hoop for her to jump through was how she would teach all these new players and with what equipment for seventeen girls. By far the biggest challenge was choosing the five girls to play for varsity. “It is very difficult to narrow it down to only five players after seeing all the hard work that all of the girls put in,” Hogueisson said. “Everyone who has joined this year has shown a tremendous amount of improvement, I wish that I could play two varsity teams because I believe everyone on the team deserves the chance to play. A portion of the team are sophomores and freshmen and Hogueisson hopes that the more seniors who graduate that take up the varsity spots will entice the newer players to stay. “I believe that we had such a large turnout because friends joined the team together,” she said. The team didn’t actually start this large to begin with. “Granted there were a lot of girls at the first practice, but there were some new faces as the season continued,” said senior Abby Wojtaszek. Freshman Alexandra Magallanes started her freshmen golf season halfway through conditioning. When asked why she joined later she said, “I was doing soccer conditioning, but I quit to play golf because I’ve been playing soccer for so long to the point that I wasn’t being fulfilled by it anymore.” 

“Our team has a strong work ethic with the extra practice hours that they put in,” Hogueisson said. “Golf is not an easy sport to learn and our girls have come very far this season.”The girls wrap up their season this Friday, September 17.

Senior Bianca Perez said that the bishop noll community should know that, “Golf is really fun and like a family and a really under-appreciated sport that doesn’t receive enough recognition.”