Stephen Buxton is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Scottsdale Christian for AZPreps365.com.

Scottsdale Christian Academy’s golf team has had to work against more than just some tricky greens or bunker shots. With players just coming off of winter sports and most of them just getting into the swing of things, the team had a week off for their school-wide mission trip and promptly followed that a week later with spring break.

The school’s last active winter sport was boys basketball, which ended its season on Feb. 18. Since then the spring sports have had to alternate weeks between being able to practice and school being out of session. For golf, this is just their third week fully able to practice and play as a team and Monday will be the start of the first time this season that the full team has had back-to-back weeks of playing together.

Despite the schedule challenges, which also occurred in their most recent match that had to be pushed back 45 minutes causing the last group to not finish, the team is playing well. The Eagles won their first home round at Orange Tree Golf Course being led by junior Gracie McGovern who shot six under par along with senior Tyler Kelso who bounced back from a rough first round and was able to shoot three over which was the second best score of the field.

With consistency in the schedule finally approaching, the team is confident on where it is and everyone is looking forward to seeing where the season takes them.

“It’s gonna be busy with golf. So it’s always a good time,” said Kelso. “Yeah I think it’ll be better, because we’re getting into the swing of things now and I think it just becomes second nature.”

Head coach Tim Ummel acknowledged the scheduling difficulties along with at times needing to chase the sunset with it still being March. He said that the team is in the perfect spot to really get rolling with a busy April schedule coming up.

“This is the month to get your groove,” said Ummel. “We kind of try to compress our season into April because that’s where they can just get momentum and just, it just becomes this is what I do every day. Versus if you have these big breaks, it’s just really hard.”

Ummel said that his big concern with the time off was the fickle nature of golf. He emphasized that being away from the game for extended periods makes it hard to get back. During the off time, Ummel said he wanted the team to stay used to the feel of the club and to hopefully work on short game as much as possible, wanting them to roll puts at home and do whatever they could to not go too long without having a club in their hand.

“Yeah, it’s definitely way better than like our first match because it was definitely more chaotic,” said McGovern. “But now things are more organized and we’re gonna get into the routine of you know, like match after match and it’s only our second match. So hopefully we keep playing better and better.”

McGovern, along with much of the team, looked like the time off hadn’t effected them from the start. On the first two holes, the Eagles had three birdies. Freshman Aiden Giannipoulos added two more late along with McGovern who had two impressive eagles six and eight. McGovern said that everything felt like it settled down and was more organized than their last match.

“Everybody’s back to getting their feet under them. They had a great week of practice, the golf course is in great shape,” said Ummel. “So now the time, you got now and this next week to really get yourself figured out, and if you do it you’re off to the races.”