By Julie Slama | [email protected]

With inclement weather, it’s hard to practice golf. When players can’t get out to play daily, it’s hard to improve their game.

That’s what Hillcrest High golf coach Dave Richardson says, and why he is more than pleased at the way sophomore Nyah Cox shot this season.

“She massively improved,” he said about the sophomore student-athlete. “She began shooting a 140 and ended the season with 105 (strokes for 18 holes). It’s a huge improvement. (Freshman) Paige Henderson played well for us, too.”

With Cox, No. 1 player junior Ava Perkins, and a strong number of returning players as well as incoming freshmen, Richardson is hopeful the Huskies can improve upon their sixth-place region finish this year.

Richardson is hopeful some changes can be made in Hillcrest’s golf program, such as introducing a golf class, much like other team sports at the school have, so the student-athletes can use the time for training. He also would like to have more access to golf courses for his players.

Right now, he has made an agreement with River Oaks that his players can collect the range balls once per week in exchange for a tee time.

“Golf is not like riding a bicycle,” he said. “You don’t just hop back on and you’re good at it. You got to practice.”

Richardson said that next year’s schedule likely won’t have back-to-back tournaments, which is hard for the student-athletes to miss two consecutive days of school to play 36 holes of golf.

“It’s just too much,” Richardson said. “They miss class discussion or labs, and then, they have homework from missing classes. It’s also hard because we have such a long drives to play against almost every team in our region. The other coaches and girls are nice, but it’s more time away and golf already is an all-day sport.”

Zoe Welch, one of the team’s three graduating seniors, agrees.

“I think we all got burnt out on those back-to-back tournaments,” she said, adding that for all the tournaments, except the one in Vernal when they shared a bus with Cottonwood High, student-athletes had to drive themselves or carpool, which also wore them down.

Still, she said it was a good team to “hang out” with this season.

Richardson agrees: “The team, the kids, they are just awesome. They got along great. I couldn’t ask for a better group.”