Rising expectations
Fourth-year coach Marilyn Ingram has believed all along that the Mountain Brook High School girls golf team has a chance to do something special.
That belief was validated in mid-March at the two-day Hoover Invitational. The first day of play was cold and rainy at the Hoover Country Club, and the Lady Spartans did not perform to their normal standard.
The next morning, before play was set to begin at the Robert Trent Jones course at Oxmoor Valley, Ingram gathered her team.
“I really challenged them to be focused and really get some fight in them,” Ingram said. “We dropped our overall team score by 22 shots, came in fourth out of 16 teams and were within six shots of Hoover.”
That second-day response from the Spartans gave Ingram further reason to believe that this Mountain Brook team could advance to the state tournament for the first time in her tenure as coach.
“It gave me such an optimism about the rest of our season and our options for playing at state,” she said.
The only representation the Mountain Brook girls have had at state over the last couple years was Mary Mac Trammell, a 2018 graduate who finished ninth in the Class 7A state tournament last spring. Trammell qualified for state as an individual each of her final two years and played as a freshman at the University of Alabama in the fall.
The top player for this year’s Mountain Brook squad has been senior Laura Catherine Goodson, who advanced to the sub-state tournament as an individual a season ago. Goodson is going to play college golf at Spring Hill College, where she also plans to major in nursing.
“She’s been a very consistent player the last two years and she’s gone from in the 10th grade, shooting in the 80s, to last year, consistently coming down into the 70s,” Ingram said.
Eleanor Kerr is the Lady Spartans’ other senior and has played golf for many years. Ingram said she possesses an ability to drive the ball well off the tee and is constantly improving in her short game on and around the green.
Emma Hallman is the lone junior on the team and has been nominated by her coach to participate in the inaugural North-South all-star tournament, which is held for most Alabama High School Athletic Association sports as an event for rising seniors in the summer to showcase their abilities.
“She’s one going from the 90s to the 80s and getting more consistent,” Ingram said, while noting her personal-best round of 78 at Shoal Creek recently.
The Lady Spartans also have three sophomores who are contributing: EK Parker, Ellison Wilson and Helen Walthall.
Parker can put up a score in the 70s and has played with the team since she was in seventh grade. Wilson is developing rapidly, despite only picking up the game of golf a few years ago. Walthall has come all the way down from shooting in the 90s to being a player who can shoot in the 70s on any given day.
Ingram’s focus the remainder of the season is on consistency from the players and helping them realize a goal of advancing to the state tournament. In order to do so, the Lady Spartans will have to advance past the section and sub-state tournaments, which are held at Highland Park on April 30 and Hampton Cove on May 6, respectively.