Warwickshire Golf
Warwickshire Girls Pre-Season Meeting
Warwickshire Girls Pre-Season Meeting
A good turnout of girls and parents attended our pre-season meeting at Shirley Golf Club on the 5th of March. We thank the golf club for kindly allowing us to use their clubhouse for this meeting.
We had an interesting programme planned but unfortunately were let down at the last minute by our guest speakers Aspire2Be Academy of Sport. We had hoped this would have been an inspirational talk for the girls covering further education and psychology. We can pass on their website address if anyone would like to know more.
Skye Furnace, Warwickshire County Captain welcomed everyone to the meeting and thanked the Girls Committee (Rahela Gordon, Pat Hale, Sharon Butler, Judith Urquhart, Kelly Toon and Val Stene) for their work in 2022 and praised the girls for their commitment, commenting on how many had reduced their handicaps or gained them for the first time. She particularly praised Arianna Virik who reduced from 5.0 to 2.4 and Serafima Taylor from 8.8 to 3.3 over 12 months. In addition, Erin Hamilton and Erin Thompson did not have handicaps at the start of last year and are now off 27.7 and 31.7 respectively.
Rahela Gordon advised the meeting that she will be stepping down as Junior Organiser at the end of this year. She asked whether any parent, or any one they know in a golf club, would like to take over this role concentrating mainly on administration and coaching.
Alison Nicholas MBE our Warwickshire Head coach, gave an overview of the coaching plan for this year. Alison together with Mark Dulson and Rory Kirwan is looking forward to seeing the girls at the first session on 18 March at The Warwickshire GC. She gave an inspiring talk encouraging the girls to practice and to gain as much from this coaching as possible, stressing how much involvement with county golf and all it offers, had helped her early in her career.
Skye presented Heather Gilks with her Captain’s badge and Heather gave an excellent speech of encouragement to all the girls and later spoke of all the ideas she has for her captain’s year.
Skye then presented trophies to the winners of the following awards:
Order of Merit Trophy and vouchers to Joint Gross winners Serafima Taylor (Sutton Coldfield GC) and Maisie Halstead (Kenilworth GC) with 128 points.
Voucher to Jessica Davies (The Warwickshire GC) Net winner with 124 points.
Stableford Series Trophy and vouchers (with the best 2 scores counting out of the 3 events played) to Joint winners Lilli Nicholls (Coventry GC) and Grace Walkden (Stonebridge GC) with 22 points.
Most Improved Golfer Trophy and voucher Sophie Goonewardane-Brown (The Warwickshire GC)
The following girls were presented with their ‘colours’ having now played 4 matches for the county and either won one or drawn two:
Heather Gilks, Jessica Davies and Sophie Goonewardane-Brown.
Pat and Rahela encouraged the girls to enter for all the events this year, particularly the 1st of the Stablefords Series which will start soon, and to make their availability known as soon as possible for the matches. Pat mentioned the 2 new matches which will be linked in with the 1st team Friendlies against Staffordshire and Leicestershire. This will give 4 girls, who are not already selected for the 1st team, the opportunity for some additional match practice and to aspire to playing for the 1st team one day! She also mentioned Midland South events including the Championship where if 3 girls have entered in either the Medal or Stableford round, we can enter them as a County Team.
On behalf of Steve Jackson who does a sterling job of encouraging clubs to hold Junior Opens and subsequently runs the Order of Merit for girls and boys, Pat reminded girls of these events and of the Wee Wonders event on 19 March at Lee Marston GC which is for u12 years of age but which he has raised to u14 years this year. This is for any girl with or without an official handicap. If any parent would like more information on Opens and the Order of Merit, please contact Steve at stevejackson@thesportsjournalist.com
We were thrilled to learn that Jessica Davies has taken on the role as an England Golf Junior Ambassador. Well done Jess, we’re proud of you!
Finally, we were delighted to name our ‘Baby’ Bear for the first time! She is Warwick (big bear) Warwickshire’s daughter, and we ran a small naming competition this year. She is now officially Willow Warwickshire and her name was suggested by Elsie Glover who will receive a small gift for naming her.
Despite the foreshortened event the girls committee were delighted that many came to support it and it gave us the opportunity to talk afterwards to many of the parents.
We very much look forward to seeing all the girls this year and wish all of them and their parents a happy and successful 2023!
Pat Hale
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