Kentwood’s girls golf team made history this year with its third place finish at the state tournament in May.
Led by sophomore Catherina Li, who took fourth individually which was the highest of any Kent girl, the Conquerors cracked the top three as a team.
Other Conks included Ravae Canas, who placed 17th, Jamie Huo who took 24th and Stephanie Cogswell, who placed 32nd.
“They were all very excited and I am proud of each one of them,” Coach Cheryl Havener wrote in an email interview. “They performed well as a team.
Havener added all of the girls are underclassmen, which gives the squad high hopes for the upcoming season in the fall.
“Our team played very consistent,” Li said. “We all struggled the first day, but we all pulled together really well. The thing with golf is that it isn’t like basketball. You have your own game, but your team is beside you.”
Li also said practicing in between the season and the state championship, which is in the spring, had a big contribution to their success.
“I remember previous years people would kind of take break from fall to spring and wouldn’t practice,” she said. “But this year the girls would keep at it and none of them really had a break. They just kept practicing.”
Li, who lives near Lake Meridian in Kent, said she first started playing golf recreationally with her family. Slowly the game started to become competitive between her and her older sister, Rui.
Li finally got serious about the game when Rui got a full-ride scholarship to the University of Washington to play golf. Li stated that aside from fun, she also sees golf as a tool to widen the opportunities to attend universities when she graduates.
During her first year on the team as a freshman she took fifth at state.
“I kind of got kind of too hyped up and I got ahead of myself and got ahead of the game and couldn’t play to win, so I didn’t have a good second day,” she said.
At this year’s state championship, she said, she had similar struggles on the first day.
“The first day I was kind of shaky,” she said. “I kind of stayed really negative. It’s a long round, four to five hours. I guess I didn’t stay positive. I didn’t have a lot of fun and as an outcome I didn’t play very well. I told myself no matter what I’d have fun because you still have your team to celebrate with you. I had a better time at it because I didn’t care about the outcome as much.”
In addition to her high school team, Li competes in tournaments across the country during the high school off-season, traveling to Oregon, California, Arizona and Texas.
