Giana Cusano, a sophomore on the Golf team, gave an insight on her district’s meet. She was explaining how golf, for the majority, is a mental game. Being too stressed and worried can affect how anyone plays.

“At first I was a bit nervous because it was my first district’s match that I’ve ever played. I knew that I definitely wasn’t going to get first place for individuals because I’ve only been playing for a little more than a year, while other girls have been playing for five years or more,” she explained.

Cusano said that she thought that she would be eliminated by the 9th hole because she had never played 18 holes. But as the match progressed, she noticed that she was enjoying the meet and that her performance wasn’t as bad as she thought.

“I made some impressive long putts, drives, finished some holes in par, others in bogey and double bogey, and I never got eliminated,” she said.

She scored a 119 in her meet, and is very proud of her score, even if it wasn’t as perfect as she expected. For scoring: par is the number of shots a player has to make it in the hole. For example if there is a par 5, a player would need to make it in the hole within five shots. When a player gets a birdie, that is one under par (so 4 strokes). If a player gets a bogey, that’s one over par (which would be 6 strokes). Double bogey is 2 shots over par (so 7 strokes). For scoring, players keep track their opponent’s score as the opponent keeps track of theirs.

“I always keep track of my own just in case of any misunderstandings. Since I was the only girl participating in districts, I didn’t count as a ‘team’. I was competing in ‘individuals,’” said Cusano.

Scoring for the boys’ team, one would add up all of their scores and divide it by the amount of the team members who played.

“Overall, I think I did pretty good this season. My first match I made a birdie (which is one under par) and I did well at other matches, too. Of course, there were some bad days, but the majority of the matches went well,” she said.