High School Golf: Kenton Ridge struggling to field teams

Kenton Ridge doesn’t have enough golfers to field a girls team for the first time in 15 years. The two who are playing this season will join the boys, who are in need of reinforcements since they have only four players in the top three grades.

For Scott Ark, it’s a sign of the times. He coached the KR girls for six years and switched over to the boys in the offseason because he knew his previous job was going to be phased out.

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He led the Cougars to the districts four times and to the state in 2013. But the tradition they built hasn’t generated an influx of new players.

“There are two things going on here: It costs money for golf clubs, and it costs money to go out and play. That’s probably one aspect that’s really killing us,” Ark said.

“And golf is a fall sport. We’re competing with volleyball, soccer and tennis. You can just ride up to your local school with those sports and walk right in. Golf isn’t a sport where you can just walk up and start playing.”

He thought of another detriment to attracting players: time.

“It takes four hours to play golf. Not everybody is up for that,” he said.

The multitude of initiatives by golf’s governing bodies to grow the game is indicative of its diminishing popularity with kids.

“One weekend, they had 90-plus lady golfers at the Elks course for an event. (City Am champ) Laaci Miller was the only 20-something person playing. Everyone else was, let’s say, from an older generation,” Ark said.

Seniors Layne Greenwood and Paige Marrratta are back from the girls team that posted an 11-2 record and had a sixth-place showing in the Division II district at Pipestone.

Greenwood averaged a team-best 42 for nine holes last year, while Marratta (the daughter of KR football coach Joel Marratta) averaged 52.

Greenwood has college potential if she wants to pursue that. She was nosed out for CBC player of the year by teammate Kacey Miller, who is a freshman golfer at Mount Vernon Nazarene University.

“Layne has a really good short game. And she has a phenomenal long-iron game. When she’s hitting 5-wood or even her utility club, it goes pretty far and the trajectory is really high. And it stops pretty quickly,” Ark said.

“She’s worked really hard on that, and it’s paid off. She hits her utility club 190 or 200 yards. That’s pretty far.”

Senior Nick Brown and junior Brandon Knapp are the top returning boys. They averaged 47 and 52 last year, respectively, and Ark believes they can lower their scores significantly this season.

“If I can get them out of those bad habits and into good habits — and understanding ball flight and trajectory and knowing where to stay out of trouble and where to risk it — I think they can save five strokes from their games,” he said.

Ark sees some promise in the freshmen, and the Cougars will rely on a few. But he knows that’s not a recipe for challenging the top tier in the CBC.

“I think we’ll perform how we did last year, which is the middle of the pack in our division,” he said. “Shawnee is returning quite a few kids and has (state qualifier) Grant Engle. (Coach) Charlie Mowell does an outstanding job getting those kids out and making sure they get instruction on the range. They’ll probably be the class of the CBC.”

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