The Clovis West’s Girls Golf team won the Valley championship on Monday, Nov. 4 at the River Island Country Club. This is the Golden Eagle’s seventh straight Valley title and it gives the team their twelfth Valley championship in fourteen years.
“This year was a ‘rebuilding’ year as four of last year’s six starters graduated,” head coach Kenneth Shipley explained. Four of the players on this year’s team were new to varsity and two of them, Tori Ruez and Ellie Lew, had been playing golf for less than two years.
Isa Montes and Marissa Martinez were the only two players to return to Clovis West’s lineup this season. They were joined by Karina Dorn and Hailey Moore who both had prior experience on the JV team.
The Golden Eagles combined for a score of 428 at the River Island Country Club. Shipley described the course as a challenging one, but added that the, “…girls played it smartly and they played it well.”
The team had previously won their league championship, giving them their fifteenth straight TRAC title. “The girls are very dedicated and they’ve worked really hard. They gained great experience and kept improving all fall,” Shipley added.
No other program has been able to continually dominate the top of their sport like Clovis West’s Girls Golf has done in the past 15 years. As is normal for high school sports the loss of graduating seniors meant there were gaps that needed to be filled at the start of the season.
One key part of the Golden Eagle’s 2018 team was Claire Shubin who was awarded Most Outstanding Player and TRAC’s Player of the Year.
Two other key seniors were Kayla Terry and Taylor Dufresne who both graduated but the Golden Eagles once again managed to fill the gaps — as they seemingly do year in and year out — to win another title.