The announcement blared.
“Pardon the interruption, but JV and varsity golf team will need to be excused at 2:15 p.m. today.”
Laughs and stares wander across the classroom towards the teacher in wait of her response. This is becoming a continuous routine, missing about eight hours a week. Most of the golfers normally miss entire school days at a time. They have missed 12 days in all.
Varsity player Amanda Malecki tells English teacher Sally Frederick that she will be absent on the upcoming day.
“What’s new?” Frederick responds.
Since Aug. 22 the varsity golf team has had nine tournaments, most of which take place during school hours. The team is in Class 2, District 7 which is the largest class in Missouri according to Athletic Director Dennis Conaghan.
Golf coach Dana Hoeper said that the team has done very well with the tournaments. So far they have won two, placed third in two and tied for sixth place in the MO-KAN without one of their players who got sick on the first hole and had to stop.
“All schools who participate in tournaments miss school, but how their school handles missed class is up to the schools,” Hoeper said. “I will not change the schedule for upcoming years because we need to play in tournaments. It is what everyone does and if we stop, we would not be competitive come post season.”
Her point was proven with varsity’s first place win in districts, a second place finish in Sectionals and a third place finish on Oct. 16 in state competition.This school year the girls have missed more days than previous years due to a smaller team that consists of 11 girls compared to 21.
“This forces our varsity team to play in all the major tournaments because of the shortage of golfers,” Conaghan said. “But we are lucky that everyone was academically eligible.”
Varsity player Claire Kramer said that once she even asked a friend to videotape a Chemistry class so she wouldn’t miss the lesson. Kramer believes this proves how well-rounded all the golf girls are to keep their grades up and still play well in competition.
Most students stress over one missed day due to a sickness, and are concerned on whether or not they will be able to exempt finals. Although they are excused absences, this is the reality for the golf team.
“To be honest I hate missing school,” varsity player Maggie Nelson said. “It’s so hard to keep up with school work and keep my grades up. It’s the tests that kill my grade because when missing all the time you miss lessons and explanations on how to do things and it’s hard to teach them to yourself if you don’t know what you are doing.”
Honors and AP English teacher Melissa Wilcox said she notices that the girls stress level has increased greatly.
“It is overwhelming for sure, and since I teach a college level class they miss huge quantities of discussion. I do update my website, and the girls are good at checking in with me,” Wilcox said. “But they look exhausted.”
They can get access to worksheets on her website, but since the nature of her college prep course is to move on, she doesn’t wait for them. Kramer said that the teachers know that golf season is a hard time and that some of their students miss a lot of school, but she feels like the teachers sympathize with them and try to make things as easy as possible to catch up.
“My grades are always lower first quarter because I miss class notes or details about a test,” Malecki said. “But I stay caught up by getting the homework ahead of time so I’m not stressed when I get back.”
The pressure is fully on the girls, Frederick said. Although, when it comes to making school work up, Frederick and Wilcox both follow the school rules of two days for every one day missed. But they begin to lose track because girls are gone so much.
“The girls do fine in the beginning with missing days but it begins to weigh on them as the season progresses,” Hoeper said. “They are very conscientious about their school work and don’t like missing class. However they are also very committed to their team as well so it’s hard.”
Malecki enjoys missing these days to play golf because she thinks the tournaments are fun, but she says it’s annoying to have so much work to make up.
Frederick agreed that the girls absences affects her teaching methods. But she understands that it is hard to find alternate times for these schools to practice.
“The majority of tournaments are held on Mondays because most country clubs are closed and they are not going to shut their courses down to the public because of high school teams,” Athletic Director Reynold Middleton said. “We play golf when courses are available.”
Malecki said that they miss school for both practices and tournaments because a match is about three hours and tournaments last about six.
“Now that we are close to the end of the season, we are pretty used to making up work but it definitely doesn’t make it any less stressful,” Kramer said. “But it’s a privilege to get to play golf all day, and with extra privilege comes extra responsibility.”