Lebanon’s girls golf team is on the upswing, big time, from where the Warriors were just three years ago.
That was when Coach Bart Baldwin arrived to take over a program with a roster barely large enough to field a varsity team of five girls. But they were a good group, he said.
“That group of girls I inherited, all 5 girls on the team averaged a 4.0 GPA. We were recognized by the state as the highest GPA in the entire state for spring sports, which was a nice feather in the cap.”
Last year the Warriors had nine golfers; this year they have 18.
“It’s going really well,” Baldwin said last week as he worked with the golfers who showed up at Pineway Golf Course for a practice session during the parent conferences break.
This is a young roster – six are back from last year’s team which included seniors Nora Horne and Julia Morse, with four sophomores and three juniors.
Returnees are now-juniors Carmen Johnson, Sierra Miller, Inez O’Driscoll and Lucy O’Driscoll, along with sophomores Sophie Culbertson and Bailey Lester.
The team is led by three of those – Culbertson, Lester and Miller, who return from last year’s varsity and are joined this year on the top five by Johnson and freshman Kapri Collins.
Miller is the lone player who was on that 2024 team when Baldwin took over.
The roster also includes senior Tenaya Garcia, who is new to the program; sophomores Aniah Bremner and Ani Olson; and freshmen Kapri Collins, Saharra Garcia, Leilahni Hall, Julia Hearn, Quinn Miles, Violet Miller, Kourtlyn Starr, Jillian Stuck and Victoria Taggart.
Baldwin, who is assisted by Johnny Garcia, said he’s fielding both a junior varsity and a junior varsity 2 team when possible this year.
It’s a work in progress, Baldwin said
“They’ll be back next year and with the team that we have, we’re hoping to have a team either this year or next year that can get into the regional tournament, be one of the top 3 teams in our league.
Baldwin, who teaches at Ralston Academy, also coaches volleyball at Seven Oak Middle School.
He played golf at Central High School in the late 1980s, “and I’ve always loved it.”
“I kind of stopped playing golf for a while because the fishing got pretty good in my life, but now that I’m back here and they had an opening, I thought, ‘You know, this is something I like to do.’”
The Warriors are nearing the midway point of their season, with two tournaments under their belt and four to go.
They will play at Mallard Creek April 27, then host the Mid-Willamette Conference championship tournament May 11-12 at Mallard.
Lebanon finished seventh with 482 points in a MWC match at Cross Creek in Dallas on April 6, which was won by Crescent Valley with 382 points, followed by Corvallis (403) and West Albany (412).
Culbertson led the Warriors, shooting 107, with Miller finishing with 112 after, Baldwin noted, “getting a little overheated.”
“She was like, maybe, like 12 over par in the last three holes and she was only like, 40 over par all day,” the coach said. “It’s there. Her game’s definitely there.
“We have some players that can shoot low and their scores are starting to drop. So I’m actually pretty excited about it.”
Both Culbertson and Miller have a shot at the district tournament, he said.
“We have some pretty strong teams in the league. So if we could get some individuals qualified for regionals, that would be great. And then from there, it’s kind of up to them on if they can, you know, shoot low and get to the state tournament.”
He said his goal now is to get his JV golfers to the point where they can shoot “double bogey golf.”
“If they can get to, like, a 54 on for nine holes, that would be great.”
The ultimate goal, especially for newcomers who aren’t ready to tee off from the box yet, he said, is “I just want them to love the game and start to develop because over the time, we’re going to get their scores to where they’re starting to play from the tee box in order to play the whole game.”
Baldwin said both his program and the boys have gotten support from the community, especially from Pineway’s Mitchell Glasser, whose family has owned the course for generations, who recently donated separate checks for $1,200 each to the Warriors programs.
Also, he said, the high school Booster Club has donated $1,000 to support a summer camp for middle-schoolers that the high school teams are holding after school lets out in June “for, hopefully, three Tuesdays.”