By Scott Brinton
Her grandfather taught her the game. Now she plays on the Calhoun girls' golf team. She loves the sport for its sense of refinement.
"I always thought golf was a very classy sport -- the etiquette, the courses are beautiful," said Amanda. "The people you play are very polite. I figure I could play for years and years, until I can't walk anymore."
Two years ago, Amanda and roughly three dozen other Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District girls would have not had the chance to represent their schools on the links. There were no girls' golf programs. At the urging of Kennedy High School parents, district Athletic Director Saul Lerner decided to change all that. Last spring, he piloted a districtwide girls' golf team, comprising mostly Kennedy players. This year, all three Central high schools -- Calhoun, Kennedy and Mepham -- have girls' squads, which practice at Eisenhower Park and play matches at Eisenhower and Bethpage State Park.
The program is already seeing success. Kennedy's Jessie Berman quickly rose to the top ranks of Nassau County girls' golf in her first year of competition as a junior last spring. She earned All-County accolades and was invited to the state championships. This spring, Berman is undefeated, and recently beat the county's top player to earn Nassau's No. 1 ranking going into the county match on the Bethpage Yellow Course this week.
Jessie started playing golf three years ago with her father, Marc, a life insurance salesman. She instantly fell in love with the game, and began taking private lessons. Next year she will play golf for the SUNY Cortland women's team while studying to become a biology teacher.
Of her performance on the links last year, she said, "I was shocked. I didn't think I was going to do that well."
To overtake the county's top player, Garden City's Kristin Jubbs, Jessie recently shot a 45 on the Eisenhower White Course, where par is 36. Jubbs shot a 48. Performances like Berman's helped propel the entire Kennedy team to the county match.
The squad's success is remarkable considering that any number of North Shore school districts have long-established girls' golf teams, with feeder programs coming out of country clubs. By contrast, no girl on the Kennedy team has played the game longer than four years. Most have little, if any, country club experience.
Deena Polsinelli's father encouraged her to take up the game. He owns the Atlas construction company in Jamaica, Queens, and belongs to the Middle Bay Country Club in Oceanside. Deena, a top player on the Kennedy squad, isn't playing to win, necessarily. "I just do it for fun," she said with a wide grin.
Brittany Georgalas, a Calhoun ninth-grader, prefers individual sports like golf. "You can focus on yourself and how well you're doing," she said. She had played softball for two years in the Merrick-North Merrick Police Activity League and intramural tennis at Merrick Avenue Middle School, but until she took up golf, no sport stuck.
June Spruyt, Calhoun's athletic coordinator and the girls' golf coach, took up the game when she was a student at Hofstra University, where she also played Division I basketball. Spruyt said the girls' golf program was started, in part, to give girls and boys equal access to sports. She explained that the federal Equal Opportunity in Sports Act of 1972, also known as Title IX, requires that school districts offer the same sports programs to boys and girls. "Having a boys' [golf] program around for several years, we were behind the times a little," she said.
Debbie Cipola-Minafo, a Kennedy High School phys. ed. teacher and the golf coach, was instrumental in starting the Central District's girls' golf program. Cipola-Minafo, who has played golf for a decade, said, "It's a great leisure activity. It's good for vacationing. It's good for networking and business."
Lerner said he wanted to start a girls' golf program to give young women an equal chance to network for business while on the links after graduation.
Rich Anderson, the Mepham girls' golf coach, who has played the game for 15 years and describes himself as an avid golf fan, said, "Golf is the kind of game that get kids easily frustrated. Even adults get frustrated. The patience it takes doesn't come easily for teenagers. The time it takes to perfect swing mechanics doesn't come overnight. It takes years to become a decent golfer. That's where the patience part comes in."
Comments about this story? SBrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.
