The Sweet Home golf team starts this year with a lot of new faces and a new coach.
Ken Anderson, a longtime manager of the Lebanon Safeway store, has taken over the program after Tom Horn stepped down as coach last year.
Anderson is new to coaching golf, he said, but has coached basketball at Lebanon High School and has played “quite a bit of golf.”
He retired from Safeway, after serving as manager in Lebanon from 1997 to 2006, and he and his wife moved to Henderson, Nev., so she could take a job in Las Vegas. There Anderson worked for the Tuscany Golf Club, a destination golf resort, for five years.
“It was phenomenal,” he said. “I played frequently. It was great.”
A basketball and baseball player in high school, Anderson said he’s played “quite a bit of golf” and is a member at Mallard Creek Golf Club, where Sweet Home practices and hosts tournaments.
“I’ve actually played a lot on the courses we’re going to be playing,” he said.
His opportunity as head golf coach came as he helped Sweet Home Athletic Director and boys basketball coach Kostanty Knurowski last season as a varsity assistant with the boys team.
“We had a casual conversation and he mentioned that he had a golfing position open, so I applied,” he said.
Anderson said his role with the team is more of a general manager, since he’s been able to recruit three capable assistants to help coach the Huskies, Pat Davis, Jeff Burgess and Chad Anderson, his son, a “single-digit” golfer who played for Lebanon.
He said Burgess, in particular, is “a really, really good swing coach” and his son has a “phenomenal” swing, so between the two “it’s worked out really good.
“I’ve kind of assumed the role of administrator because I recognize Jeff’s ability,” Anderson said.
He said that having assistants enables them to spend more time with each golfer, helping to break down their swing “so that they can go home and stand in front of a mirror and work on it.”
The Huskies, thus far, have one girl and nine boys playing golf.
No girls had returned from last year’s girls team as of late last week, but four boys are back from 2011: Casey Horner, Sten Weld, Christian Porter and Michael Tolle. Rounding out the team are Stephen Bishop, Trevor Bulman-Julte, Austin Yoder, Jacob Richardson, Bart Hutchison, Brenner Roberts and Ryan Yon.
Thus far, senior Hailey Rice is the lone girl, but Anderson says he’s hoping some others will decide to play.
“She’s pretty new to the program,” he said. “Probably my No. 1 goal is to develop a women’s team.
Some schools don’t even have a girls team. What we have to do is somehow, over the course of this season and during the off-season, find ways to encourage women to participate.”
Meanwhile, he said, he’s scheduled events for Rice and any other girls who play, to compete in.
He said the goal for the whole team is to create a “positive environment” to learn how to play golf.
“We’re just learning to play the game the right way, with etiquette and integrity,” he said. “We want to create a positive environment of equality for the boys and girls programs.”
He said he’s purchasing shirts and bags for players and he’s looking for more students to use them.
“If anybody is interested, just talk to me,” Anderson said, noting he plans to make himself available at the high school to talk to students to see if he can recruit some more wannabe golfers. “We’re talking about growing and expanding. Don’t be afraid if you’ve never played golf. We’re not making any cuts this year.”
The Husky boys will open March 16 at Tokatee and will play at Mallard Creek three times: March 21, April 18 and April 25, all at noon.
The girls schedule opens at Mallard Creek on March 20 and returns again on April 24, both at noon.