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Trenton Lady Bulldogs Golf
Members of the 2012 Lady Bulldogs golf team include, from left, Coach Jeremy Austin, Katie Lenhart, Chandler Wilson, Karley McCollum, Haley Purkapile, and Lauren Schmidt.
The Trenton Lady Bulldogs golf team will once again be short on players. Only five girls are out for this year’s squad, but Trenton enjoyed plenty of success last season, one in which only six girls were out. Coach Jeremy Austin doesn’t see the low numbers as a disadvantage and points out Trenton isn’t the only school low on girls golfers. “As a sport in general we are seeing a lot less girls come out and play golf every year,” Austin said. “I know when I first started coaching girls golf here we would go and play Cameron or Chillicothe and they
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would have full squads and have to leave girls at home because they had so many players. Now, Cameron had two players last year and I think they may be down to one this year and Chillicothe’s numbers have fallen off sharply. It just runs in cycles.” What the Lady Bulldogs do have, however, is three returning seniors who competed at the state golf tournament last season and a pair of underclassmen who will round out a full five-person team. “The girls that we do have are very strong golfers,” Austin said. “We have three state qualifiers who
have seen a lot of post-season play and they have put in a lot of time over the summer and they do a great job.” Chandler Wilson headlines the returning group having won three individual tournament titles last season and medaling in five total tournaments. Wilson was routinely the low-score golfer on the team. When Wilson competed at the state tournament at the end of the season, she was doing so for a third-straight year. “Chandler has managed to get herself to state in each of her three
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Fall Sports 2012
seasons of golf,” Austin said. “She has been very successful each time she has gone to state as well. You can just count on her. She doesn’t usually get very rattled, she keeps everyone else calm and focused as well and she is just a really great leader for this group.” Behind Wilson are her classmates and fellow state qualifiers Katie Lenhart and Haley Purkapile. Purkapile collected four medals last season and Lenhart won three. For Lenhart, a lot of summer work has paid off. The senior has looked sharp in early practices and Austin expects big things from her this season. “Katie played a lot this summer and she has improved quite a bit,” Austin said. “She knew she had a couple of weaknesses she wanted to work on over the summer and she has made some big improvements in those areas from what I have seen so far. If you come out here and put the time in, which is pretty difficult for a young lady who has to balance cheerleading and working with practicing golf, it will pay off and I think it will for her this season.” Purkapile, meanwhile, was playing her best golf of the season down the stretch last year and will look to carry that momentum over to her senior year. “Haley was playing her best golf toward the end of last year and she will have a great season this year,” Austin said. “She is a hard worker and she was pretty busy this summer as well with showing horses and ponies and to get her back out
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