Before the fall 2020 high school girls golf season teed off, the five coaches of the Western Athletic Conference offered their preseason predictions on teams and top players.
Virtually in unanimous comments, the Hays High Lady Indians were the overwhelming favorites to win the league in the team chase and one of several of their returning golfers were favored to capture Player of the Year honors.
With the season now complete, the prognosticators were exactly right as the Lady Indians won all five league meets for a perfect score of 25 points (5 for each win) to easily outdistance runner-up Dodge City (18) and defending league champ Garden City (14). Great Bend was fourth with 13 points and Liberal fifth with 5 points.
Individually, it was junior Taleia McCrae who dominated the league tournaments, as she won four of the five with teammate Katie Dinkel capturing the other individual top spot. McCrae thus earned Player of the Year honors with 73 points out of a possible 75 (15 for first place in each event) while her teammate Sophia Garrison was runner-up with 63 points. Garden City sophomore Ryann Warren was third with 56 points, Dinkel fourth with 52.5 points, Ashlyn Harbaugh of Great Bend fifth with 45.5 points and Tina Fry of Dodge City rounding out the first-team all-WAC list with 39 points.
With the dominating performance of his team, Hays coach Mark Watts earned WAC Coach of the Year honors.
For McCrae, winning the WAC was an important goal after having come close in her freshman and sophomore years to Garden City.
“As a team, it was one of our goals so it was important for us to play well,” McCrae said. “It wasn’t until the season was about halfway through that I realized that maybe I could get Player of the Year. It’s not something you think about every day, but when it happens, it does mean a lot.”
McCrae said working hard in the offseason paid off handsomely for here and her teammates.
“All the hard work paid off and for those of us who will be back next year, we know we can still get better,” McCrae said. “The biggest area of improvement for me was my driver. I’d never really used one before, but this year I hit it more.”
An area of her game that improved, yet still could improve, was her short game of chipping and putting.
“Last year I had a rough time with 3-putts, but this year I didn’t do that so much,” she said. “Still, I know I can get better.”
With so much of the game focused on the mental preparation and dealing with on-course challenges, McCrae said she was much tougher in that area.
“Definitely you’re going to play better when you stay positive,” McCrae said. “In the past if I had a bad hole, it would get me down for a while. This year, I did a much better job of letting it go and just move on to the next hole.”
With another year of high school golf remaining, McCrae said she would like to see her game improve as much between now and 2021 as it did from 2019.
“I want to work on every aspect of my game to better myself,” she said. “When things aren’t going too good, you’ve got find a way to fix things. It has helped to have some really good teammates because they push you to be your best. We have a positive team and we just pick each other up.”
McCrae said she was not surprised that the team enjoyed so much success this season.
“We have had a good mindset all year, so I’m not that surprised at how we did,” McCrae said. “With as much depth as we have, it takes a certain amount of pressure off each golfer. But winning the WAC was definitely a highlight and to win Player of the Year is a pretty cool thing.”
Coach of the Year
Mark Watts has been around the golf course more than a time or two during his 3-decade plus coaching career.
So when he knew he was returning the bulk of his 2019 girls golf team at Hays High, there were expectations of a successful season.
His Lady Indians didn’t disappoint as they capture all five Western Athletic Conference tournaments, his players won all five individual titles (Taleia McCrae 4, Katie Dinkel 1), and thus earned Coach of the Year honors by the league.
“I knew we had a good nucleus back,” Watts said after the regular season concluded. “There were a few other good individuals returning, but our team had a lot of depth returning. But with all the COVID stuff, you never really knew what might happen, so I think it was fortunate the way things worked out.”
Watts agreed that the depth of his roster allowed his players to play more relaxed, more focused than perhaps in the recent seasons.
“When you have a couple of players who can go low, it just makes it easier for the other players to be able to play more to their ability,” Watts said. “Most of the team showed improvement over a year ago, so that was evident in our overall team scores.”
Watts said he continues to stress to his players to be good drivers of the ball, and then to work more on their putting and short-game.
“There’s certain areas of the game of golf that are critical to performing well, and those are two of them,” he said again in reference to driving and putting. “We work on how to read the greens for putting, and we work on that stuff until they’re blue in the face. We try to emphasize staying out of trouble and that bogeys are our friend.”
Watts praised his team for their commitment to improvement.
“They all spent time on working to get better and it paid off,” he said.
2020 WAC Golf Team Standings
| Team | Points |
|---|---|
| Hays | 25 |
| Dodge City | 18 |
| Garden City | 14 |
| Great Bend | 13 |
| Liberal | 5 |
2020 All-Western Athletic Conference
First Team
| Name | School | Class | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Taleia McCrae | Hays | JR | 73 |
| Sophia Garrison | Hays | SR | 63 |
| Ryann Warren | Garden City | SO | 56 |
| Katie Dinkel | Hays | SO | 52.5 |
| Ashlyn Harbaugh | Great Bend | SR | 45.5 |
| Tina Fry | Dodge City | JR | 39 |
Coach of the Year: Mark Watts, Hays High
Second Team
| Name | School | Class | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abbie Norris | Hays | FR | 34.5 |
| Ashlyn Armstrong | Dodge City | SO | 32 |
| Sierra Smith | Hays | SR | 23.5 |
| Allyson Kaiser | Great Bend | JR | 22.5 |
| Lauren Gleason | Dodge City | SR | 22 |
| Reanna Konrade | Dodge City | JR | 20 |
