Team, individual, coach awards a clean sweep
It should have come as no surprise that the Hays High Lady Indians’ girls’ golf team swept through the 2022 fall season with a perfect 5-0 tournament record in the Western Athletic Conference.
It also will be no surprise that the Lady Indians, coached by veteran Mark Watts, also garnered the WAC Player of the Year once again as senior Katie Dinkel repeated her 2021 title, just edging out Garden City’s Ryann Warren by the slimmest of margins, 69.0 to 68.5 points.
Inevitably then, it will be no shock that the Lady Indians dominated the first and second-team all-WAC selections, which are based upon points earned in each of the five tournaments. Points are assigned on a 15-14-13-12-11 basis all the way to 1 point and then compiled to determine the POY.
Watts, who is just the second coach of the girls’ program since it was established in 1982, says that the consistency of the program through the years and development of players is the primary driving reason for the program’s success.
“We’ve had a lot of our kids growing up playing the game with their parents,” Watts said recently after completing his 33rd season.
Watts, himself a Hays High graduate (1974), said through his three-plus decades the program has seen its share of roller-coaster success. But over the last nine years, his teams have captured six WAC titles, including the last three while winning 15 consecutive league tournaments.
“I think we’ve been able to get a lot of girls out early in their high school years and work with them to develop them into better players,” Watts said. “But really, a lot of the success is a credit to the parents for introducing them to the game at an early age.”
While volleyball and basketball are the primary “major” team sports, golf and tennis remain principally individual sports wrapped around team competition.
“We’ve got a nice golf course on which to practice,” Watts said of Smoky Hill Country Club. “We go to the middle schools and meet with those coaches to let them know what the golf program is all about. Some of the girls find out that the team sports and cross country wasn’t for them, and we get them for golf.”
Another aspect of the team’s success comes from sisters of the same family.
“This (current) group of girls have had older siblings play and they are also athletic in other sports,” Watts said. “The competition daily helps everybody become better.”
Watts’ current POY, Dinkel, followed in the footsteps of her older sister, Karee, who was WAC POY in 2017. She says that the daily competition within the team is what has made this group so competitive on a statewide basis.
“This year, I just tried to enjoy everything, taking it all in,” said Dinkel, who won the 2021 POY title by 1.5 points and then made it even closer this year. She claimed the individual title in the last tournament of the year at Dodge City Country Club, edging Warren by just one shot and getting that 1-point to move past Warren by .5 points.
“It was one of the most fun rounds ever,” Dinkel recalled of the tournament at DCCC, a site that replaced the event originally scheduled for Great Bend’s Stoneridge Golf Club. “Playing with two amazing golfers (the other was Dodge City’s Ashlyn Armstrong) was very sentimental with them. I would call it a happy tournament. With WAC being over, it felt strange that it was my last tournament playing with them. I think I would have been happy either way.”
Dinkel, who will not play collegiate golf, said she took most of the summer off from the game to recharge her batteries and not to get burned out.
“I decided after my junior year that I just wanted to enjoy my senior year as much as possible because I knew I wouldn’t be playing in college,” Dinkel said. “I’ll leave my golfing to playing with my dad and sister.”
Dinkel said she was thrilled with how her teammates (both senior and underclassmen) had blended together and improved over her high school career.
“It’s an honor to be part of a great program,” she said. “These are great girls and I’m excited to see the younger players develop because they’ve provided us great depth.”
The improvement from junior to senior seasons came in hitting the driver longer and straighter with more consistency, Dinkel said.
“My putting has also improved,” she said. “I’ve been more solid on my lag putting and getting the speed better and being more accurate from 10 feet and in.”
Dinkel, who also plays soccer in the spring (all-WAC in 2022), plans to pursue a career in the medical field, perhaps as a physical therapist, nurse, with studies in exercise science and psychology.
In addition to Dinkel winning POY honors, the Lady Indians were represented on the first team by Jaycee Oakley and Abbie Norris, who finished fourth and fifth in the standings behind Dodge’s Armstrong, who was third with 63 points. Oakley and Norris compiled 57 and 55.5 points while Garden City junior Jerika Lopez snared the sixth and final first-team spot with 52.5 points.
Second team honors went to Hays’ Evyn Cox (45.5), Claire Humphrey (37.5) and Lily Garrison (36.5), along with Dodge City’s Payton Dunn (30.5) and Riley Kippes (24.5) and Liberal’s Ashlynn Wagenseller (22.0).
Oakley is a sophomore while Norris, Cox and Garrison are juniors who will return in 2023. Humphrey is the other senior on this year’s HHS squad.
Watts was named Coach of the Year. Watts said there were a number of reasons why the program has remained consistently good through the years.
“We take the month of June off and in July we work on some basics,” he said. “We try to build team unity by doing club cleaning at some of the local tournaments to raise money for the program. We do some team dinners to get the girls to spend time together away from the course.
“We do a lot of work on short game drills and I think that’s one reason we’ve been successful. Golf is a game of 18-hole, par-3s and we practice from that distance in. This helps them gauge which distance they hit certain clubs. We try to make everything competitive and reward the players for each drill.”
Watts said that he maintains an in-depth record of statistics on each golfer, and focuses on scoring around the greens and on putting.
“The hardest part of golfers is learning how to read greens with the slopes and speed being different at different courses,” Watts said. “We do a lot of lag drills and the girls understand the importance of this part of the game. We do way more short-game work than the long game.”
In the long run for Watts, it’s about developing both the physical and mental aspects of the game that lead to success.
“We had 15 players out this year and we work hard on developing leaders on the team,” Watts said. “By the time they are seniors, they have experienced how the program works and we always look to those girls to help the younger girls along the way.”
Watts said this year’s team, which established 18-hole scoring records, saw at least three players, including Dinkel, as the low scorer for his squad. Oakley and Norris each had scores in the mid-70s and will return in 2023.
“When you have more than one good player, it takes the pressure off everyone because there is always somebody to pick you up,” Watts said.
That certainly proved true during the 2022 WAC season.
Western Athletic Conference
Girls Golf – Final 2022 Standings
Team (Points)
1. Hays, 25; 2. Dodge City, 18; 3. Garden City, 17; 4. Liberal, 8; 5. Great Bend, 1.
Note: Team points are awarded at each of the 5 tournaments hosted by each school on a 5-4-3-2-1 basis.
Individual
First Team All-WAC (Total Points)
1. Katie Dinkel, Hays, 69.0; 2. Ryann Warren, Garden City, 68.5; 3. Ashlyn Armstrong, Dodge City, 63.0; 4. Jaycee Oakley, Hays, 57.0; 5. Abbie Norris, Hays, 55.5; 6. Jerika Lopez, Garden City, 52.5.
Second Team All-WAC
7. Evyn Cox, Hays, 45.5; 8. Claire Humphrey, Hays, 37.5; 9. Lily Garrison, Hays, 36.5; 10. Payton Dunn, Dodge City, 30.5; 11. Riley Kippes, Dodge City, 24.5; 12. Ashlynn Wagenseller, Liberal, 22.0.
Note: Points are awarded at each of the 5 WAC tournaments hosted by each school on a 15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis.
