It is still dark outside when Zoe Jiamanukoonkit (12) wakes up before her alarm clock on Wednesday, just shy of 5:45 a.m., on day two of the North County Conference Coastal League tournament. She walks into her kitchen softly and fixes herself a pumpkin spice yogurt bowl for breakfast. Most of the morning is quiet, even as Jiamanukoonkit’s mother drives her to school.
At 6:30 a.m., she meets with the rest of the Cardinal and Golf golf team, the two varsity girls tennis teams, in the parking lot behind the school to carpool to Miramar Golf Course.
“There were two vans for Cardinal and Gold, and some people drove themselves,” Jiamanukoonkit said. “[The Cardinal] van was me, Kate Hu (11), Sydney Kroc (10), Punn Maneerat (11), Tyana Jacot (12) and Vera Liu (10).”
As the sun begins to rise on the ride to Miramar, Jiamanukoonkit connects her phone to the van’s Bluetooth and scrolls through Spotify to find upbeat songs. Chris Drake, the schools girls and boys golf head coach as well as Advanced Placement and College Preparation United States History teacher, requested “Brutal” by Olivia Rodrigo.
“Right at the chorus, he turned up the volume, like, super loud, and he just started dancing out to ‘it’s brutal out here,’” Jiamanukoonkit said.
Around 7:45 a.m., the vans pulled into Miramar’s parking lot, followed by teammates driving themselves. The teams unpacked their golf bags and headed to warm up.
“The warm up area was super busy,” Alice Koontz (12) said. “I probably warmed up for 10 minutes on the range, and then 20 minutes [for] short game … You could definitely tell most people were a little bit frazzled because they’re used to having more range time and more time on putting greens and such.”
There were two range stalls for sixteen players, so they took turns warming up full swing, switching out to practice ‘short game’ on the putting green. Even as a team, the golfers find different routines that work for each of them; while Koontz is used to warming up not too long before tournaments, Jiamanukoonkit found the time crunch “kind of insane,” especially since she likes to practice for an hour before tournaments.
By 9:00 a.m., after Drake snapped a couple of group photos and Jiamankoonkit took 0.5 selfies with the team, the girls split off into match groups to walk to their shotgun starting teeboxes. According to Koontz, Jiamankoonkit “takes the most photos out of everyone, so if someone has photos, it would be her.”
Miramar Golf Course sits at the center of Marine Corps Air Station. Its par-72 tees sweep 6,811 yards of relatively flat and “pretty wide open” fairways encompassing “pretty small greens,” according to Drake.
“The first hole, I hit a really long drive, and it went probably 280 [yards] and I was really excited because hitting it 280 is always helpful,” Koontz said. “The first four holes were the only four bogeys I had. I had one double on the back, but just not really bogeying after that was good. I had a lot of really far drives that were pretty good. My short game was pretty good. I think I just need to work on my approach shots, because that hurt me at the beginning.”
On the course, Koontz tries not to think too much since “golf is super mental, and I think if you get too up in your head, it can only hurt you.”
In the group ahead of Koontz, Jiamanukoonkit found her first birdie on hole six.
“It was a short par five,” Jiamanukoonkit said. “On the second shot, I made a lay up in front of the water, and I had 90 yards left, so I hit my 50 degree shot to six or seven feet. The pin was kind of on a slope and then once I walked on the green, and the slope kind of just clicked into my brain, and I was like, ‘Okay, I know the line.’”
On another par five, Kroc teed off with a “good drive,” followed by “a good three-wood right after,” bringing her 50 yards from the green. She then struck a shot wedge four inches to the hole, leaving a tap-in for birdie.
“That hole was really good because it kept my momentum going into the rest of the round,” Kroc said. “When I’m out playing, I try not to overthink and not fixate on how other people around me are doing and only focus on me in one shot at a time.”
Jiamanukoonkit finished two–over-par (74) for a two-day total of three-over-par (147) and Koontz finished four-over-par (76) for a two-day total of seven-over-par (151). Kroc finished four strokes under par (68) for a two-day total of six-under-par, tied first in individual standings with Sabrina Sun (10) from Carlsbad High School and placed second overall by a scorecard playoff.
Over this two-day league tournament at Pala Mesa and Miramar Golf Course, the school’s Cardinal team placed first in team standings (724) while Gold placed second (787).
“In our team, we’re constantly learning from each other and pushing each other to be better,” Kroc said. “It’s just a great environment to be in and learn from.”
Koontz spent half an hour catching up with girls from other schools after logging scores. Though golf is an individual sport, much of the team and community grew up playing together in the same junior golf leagues.
“It was good to catch up with people from other schools that I hadn’t seen in a while,” Koontz said. “Then I gave two of the girls on my team a ride home. We decided to go to Chick-fil-A because we drove by it, and we were like, ‘Wow, Chick-fil-A, sounds really good.’”
Koontz, Olivia Richardson (10) and Alaina Achtel (10) caught up over an early dinner before she drove them home around 6:00 p.m. Meanwhile, the vans decided on a post-game drink at Boba Love instead of their usual frozen yogurt.
Looking forward, the team sets its sights on upcoming qualifying tournaments.
“[The next] week is CIF,” Drake said. “We’d like to do well enough in CIF to go to regionals, do well enough in regionals to go to state and our goal is to win the state championship.”
The girls golf team carries a legacy of six-time state champions and 18-time San Diego CIF sectional champions. Perhaps almost as impressive, the girls have found a way to play this solo sport together.
“Since golf is an individual sport, I’ve never really felt like I’m a part of anything before,” Jiamanukoonkit said. “Once I’m part of a team, it’s like I’m playing for a bigger purpose. Even if I don’t do well, I have a supportive team that can still do well for us as a group … Before, it was really hard and stressful, and it’s a lot of pressure on me. With the team, I feel like I have so much more fun not just on the golf course, but also when we get fro-yo or on the van or when we went to North Calif. and had slime time in the hotel. It’s more than just golf itself.”
