The Milan News-Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
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Snow bound
Milan golf readies for season despite weather
By Jerry Hinnen, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: March 27, 2008
With so many new faces on the Milan boys' golf team and a new coach to boot, the Big Reds likely could have used a smooth start to their practice season.
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Mother Nature, unfortunately, has had other ideas.
"It's been extremely frustrating," first-year head coach Claire Neff said of trying to find suitable times and locations for her team to practice.
Thanks to the unusually harsh winter and record-setting snowfall, area golf courses have yet to open for play and the Big Reds have been restricted to work off the driving range and hitting wiffle balls indoors.
"Right now we're just trying to do the best we can," Neff said at Tuesday's practice, held at a snowy Yorktown Driving Range after a last-second switch from the Augusta Pines Golf Center. "It's been a tough spring, and an expensive spring. We go through ha six-dollar bucket of balls pretty quick."
The Big Reds were originally slated to open their season this Friday at the Ida Invitational, but will now have to wait until April 18 and the season's first Huron League jamboree at Airport.
The haphazard preparation schedule might be especially debilitating for the Big Reds, given that the team graduated six seniors — virtually the entire starting varsity lineup — from the previous season's squad, which qualified for Regionals for the first time in school history in the fall of 2006. (The 2007 MHSAA season switch has meant that this will be the first boys' golf season since then.)
"We've got nine freshmen and a lot of first-year players," she said. "But we've also got some talent and we do return five or six guys from either the varsity or JV. There's a couple of kids we think could make state."
The program also underwent a coaching change during its extended offseason. Jeff Davis resigned to concentrate on his position as head girls' basketball coach and Neff, after two seasons at the helm of the Big Red girls, took over boys' duties as well.
This season will be the first for Neff (who also spent multiple years coaching the girls' team at Ypsilanti) in charge of a boys' team, and she admits that it's a "different animal" coaching boys.
But she also doesn't expect it to matter.
"The girls tend to want as much advice as possible while the boys think their swing is perfect," Neff joked. "But in the long run the gender thing isn't going to make any difference."
Although Neff is wary of setting too many goals for a team she "hasn't even had a chance to see on the course yet," she's confident that enough of the 22 boys who have come out for the team will emerge to make the Big Reds successful.
"We're setting some very high goals," she said. "We're certainly hoping to go .500. But we've got a lot of work to get there. Our first goal, right now, is just to improve."
Perhaps more important to Neff this year than success on the scorecards, however, is the continued growth of the program. It's with an eye towards that development that she has elected not to cut the team's roster down to a more standard size.
"We're very happy with our numbers and I'm going to do my darnedest to get them all into the lineup at some point," Neff said. "As a first-year coach, it's my job to keep the program moving in the right direction. Right now we're focused on developing our skills and the development of the program."
If there's one thing Neff isn't worried about in the midst of snowstorms and inexperience, it's the team's commitment.
"I've seen so much determination out of these kids already," she said. "When they can't get into the gym or they're not able to play, the yget frustrated. That's what you want to see. They're dedicated to getting better. And that's the kind of attitude that's going to make this a very strong program."
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