A banner in the Malibu High School (MHS) gym recognizes the boys golf team as 2009 league champions, and the Sharks are about to add another year.
Since the beginning of last season, the team went from lacking enough players to even make up a team to winning its first league championship in seven years.
The Sharks posted a combined team score of 422 to take the title and ended the season with 30 team points total. Quincy Allen and Daniel Haines led the team, both posting scores of 75. Luca Marinaro had the next lowest score of 90, followed by Graham Knox and Hunter Nelson, who both posted scores of 91. The team’s sixth competitor, senior Chase Murrell, posted a score of 107.
The league victory came on the heels of an undefeated regular season, where the Sharks won all six of their matches.
Cindy McConnell is in her second year coaching the team, after stepping in last year so the program could keep running. Only three to four golfers played on the team last year, but this year it grew to 11 members–six of whom compete in matches.
“Last year, we were competing on an individual basis,” McConnell said. “Quincy was MVP with the low scoring average and Daniel was the second.”
Allen and Haines currently remain the best players in the league, with Haines holding a scoring average in the low 80s and Allen scoring an average of around 77. Haines brought home the MVP award from this season’s league tournament.
“Our team [this year] was interesting because six of the boys haven’t played golf before,” McConnell added. “The kids who have come back all improved their stroke average, and out of all those together we were really competitive.”
Unlike other MHS teams, the golf team has the additional commitment of commuting outside of Malibu for practices, since there is no local golf course. The Sharks train over the hill at Westlake Golf Course Monday through Thursday, though Thursday practices are sometimes replaced with competitions.
“They are pretty good about carpooling with each other to get to practice,” McConnell said. “It’s a huge commitment to go over the hill and it takes a lot of time, so if they have to miss one of those days, I’m not a stickler. Golf is an individual sport, so they can always go out on a weekend and play, which a lot of them do. There are so many ways to improve.”
McConnell added that running practices has become more complex this year because the larger team comes with a larger range of ability levels.
“Half our team is somewhat experienced and the rest are beginning, novice players,” she said. “I was basically helping those kids with the fundamentals and tried to split my time as evenly as I could.”
While many of the players have improved their shooting averages this season, McConnell recalls Nelson’s performance at the River Ridge meet as a particularly outstanding improvement.”
“We played in 30 mph winds and he came in with a round that was his best,” she said. “He shot low 90s and he had been shooting over 100 [in previous tournaments].
“As far as a standout, they are really solid players and there have been steady performances throughout the season,” she added.
The Sharks’ so-far outstanding season is not over yet. They will travel to Ojai to compete in the CIF team championship on Thursday, May 12. Haines and Knox have will compete in the Individual Regional Qualifier as well, along with over 100 players from surrounding leagues.
“I would love to see them [finish] in the top 20,” McConnell said. “If they had a really good day, I think they could do that. They’re going to be competing against boys in top-division leagues, so they’ve got their work cut out for them. I want to see them play well and gain a lot of tournament experience.”
Despite the Sharks’ outstanding performances thus far this season, McConnell said she has visions for the team to work toward state championship in the future.
“I’d love to see them move up to a higher division and I’d love to see more of the guys get into the regional tournament and move toward state,” she said. “I think they have a lot of potential to do that.”