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High school golf: The spectator sport

Jeff and Ramona Wagner traveled from Cortez to watch Tristen Shelby play in the Class 4A Western Regional Golf Tournament on Tuesday at Hillcrest Golf Club. They are two of the many fans that turned out to watch high school golf, a sport that traditionally doesn’t generate much spectator attention.

Who ever said golf wasn’t exciting?

Parents flock to football games on Friday night to cheer on their sons and favorite teams. Volleyball stands frequently are packed with boisterous fans supporting their players, and no onlookers can get after an official like baseball fans.

Golf fans, they’re a different breed.

“It is very pleasant. Very few people are bad fans here,” said Jackie Gillespie, mother of Durango High School junior Cory Gillespie. “All the kids have good days and bad days, just like any other sport. The parents are going to be bummed, but there’s never any bad language or yelling about bad calls or being mad at anybody else.”

Parents from all across the western part of Colorado descended on Hillcrest Golf Club on Tuesday for the Class 4A Western Regional championship. Some ventured from as far as Steamboat Springs to watch their sons compete.

During the regular high school golf season, parents always can be found walking the fairways alongside their daughters or sons.

It is different than watching most team sports, but they support their favorite players and teams with the same dedication and enthusiasm.

“It’s just so different being that you have to be quiet,” said Beth Barnhardt, mother of DHS junior Cameron Barnhardt. “It is really hard, because you do want to jump up and yell ‘great job,’ but it is just better to sit back and watch.”

DHS golf head coach Kirk Rawles called most other team sports “reactionary sports.” Golf, he said, is different.

“In other sports, everybody watching is reacting to the movement of the ball. When the ball bounces one way in football or goes off the rim in basketball, there is that impulse to burst out yelling,” he said. “In golf, the golfer is moving the ball and charting themselves around a course.”

High school golfers are lucky to have a gallery of 15 people, and that’s only if there is a sudden-death playoff or when coaches and players gather on the 18th green to watch the final group of the day.

“We don’t have that mob environment of an enclosed stadium like team sports,” he said.

Still, parents hang on every shot as they follow their teams on a golf course, even when rounds drag on nearly six hours.

“Your stomach drops when you see a putt lip out, and it does for every kid, not just your own,” Gillespie said. “Cory was big into baseball, and so are we, but never once have we been disappointed Cory chose golf instead of baseball.”

But what the parents enjoy watching most is the camaraderie on the golf course between the players. Though they are competitors, the players build bonds throughout the season that are tough to break.

“They support each other when they make a good shot, and they really respect each other,” Barnhardt said. “It is the same with the parents. We’re all rooting for all the players.”

Parents build relationships with the other parents from rival schools. Gillespie said Montezuma-Cortez moms Monica Plewe and Annette Rudosky have become regular pals on the golf course.

Though a high school golf tournament doesn’t generate the roars of a Friday night football game, the golf parents insist they wouldn’t trade their days on the golf course for a Friday night in the bleachers.

“I would go to every tournament if I could, and at least I get some exercise walking with the groups,” Gillespie said. “Plus, we travel a lot of places, and there’s never an ugly golf course. It’s a lot of fun.”

jlivingston@durangoherald.com

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