When you watch an athlete, or in this case a group of athletes, work toward a goal and then finally achieve it, and when you have known most of them since they were little kids, well, it just doesn’t get any better than that. Last week in Vicksburg parents, grandparents and friends gathered outside the clubhouse at the Vicksburg Country Club to wait for the Cathedral golf team to come one group at a time during the State 1-A Golf Championship.

After winning the first round on Tuesday, Wednesday became a waiting game to see if we would maintain or stretch out our lead as others worked to play catch-up.

As each group came and the scores were checked, verified and recorded it became closer and closer to a reality and the grin on Coach Ken Beesley Jr’s face got bigger and bigger.

Finally all of our players were in and we were leading handily with two groups still out. Even knowing that it would be virtually impossible for someone in the last groups to significantly change the scores, the kids and coach refused to celebrate until the last score was recorded.

And then high-fives were the order of the day. The five team members and Coach lined up for photos and medals and grinned as they passed the trophy around.

With a combined two-day score of 629 the team was 31 strokes ahead of the next closest team, our arch rivals, the St. Al Flashes.

Although I do have to mention a young man on the St. Al team named Chase who is a fantastic golfer the only thing that keeps my son Matthew from disliking him completely is that he and his family are also Ole Miss fans.

Matthew and Jordan Farmer came in third and fourth in the tournament. For his part Matthew has shown more dedication to improving his golf game than I ever thought possible.

Practicing every day with the team and then walking over to the fifth hole at Beau Pre in the evenings, he has managed to shave several strokes off his game and I couldn’t be prouder of him.

As one of my favorite people in the world, there is nothing to say about Jordan Farmer except that he is a natural-born golfer.

He has one of the prettiest swings you will ever see and you can look forward to seeing him play at the college level.

I’m afraid it will be in a purple and gold shirt, but I guess I can live with it.

The best part about him and Matthew is that they have a friendly rivalry and work hard together keeping their eye on the team as a whole.

With those two boys is one more junior that I think is fabulous and that is Mary Kate Byrne.

No one on the golf team puts in more practice time or dedication than Mary Kate. Always working on her game, this young lady is just that, in a sport where she has to tolerate the presence of teenage boys on a constant basis Mary Kate is the epitome of good sportsmanship and grace and all the boys love her.

Following the three juniors are two sophomores, Jake Kaiser and Aaron Murray. Jake has been a member of the top five for sometime and he too, has been putting in a lot of practice time to improve his game. Aaron moved into the top five this year and is showing a lot of promise. Not only is he a good-natured guy he has no trouble dishing it out to the juniors who like to remind him that they run the show.

And then there is our coach, Ken Beesley, Jr., known to all our players and parents as J.R. From putting up the &uot;sacred gold CD&uot; that has been passed down year after year to washing the teams jerseys he is a great coach and we couldn’t do without him. He is always a positive influence on them and while he has no problem in telling them what they need to do, he also is quick to praise them.

So hats off to the CHS Varsity golf team on winning the State Championship.I hope it is the first of many more.

E-mail

Christina Hall

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christina.hall@natchezdemocrat.com

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