Last season ended on a sour note for Park City’s boys golf team.
The Miners finished as the highest-ranked team not to qualify for the state tournament, leaving a program that had won 11 state titles in a row between 2008 and 2018 in the cold and in foreign territory. While Park City’s season this year didn’t start on the right foot – the Miners finished fifth out of the seven teams in its region at a tournament at Mountain Dell on Wednesday – there’s plenty of room for optimism for 2022 and beyond.
“They are motivated,” Park City coach George Murphy said. “They’ve been playing golf nonstop. Even last winter, ended up giving up going skiing, going down to (golf), putting time in.”
Park City has a young, inexperienced group this year. The Miners’ varsity roster includes five sophomores and two freshmen, while the junior varsity roster has 10 sophomores and two freshmen, according to Murphy. But Murphy’s expectations are still to field a competitive team in a stiff region.
“Our region, I think, in (Class) 5A, I think, is the toughest region in (Class) 5A, and so it’s going to be very competitive,” Murphy said. “But we are very capable of competing, so our expectations are going to be high every year. They put the work in, they’ll start to see the results.”
While Park City as a team didn’t have its strongest performance during the Mountain Dell tournament, sophomore Sam Hunt put together a solid performance. Hunt carded a team-best 75, while senior Aiden Taylor and junior Duke Gordon finished second on the team with an 81 each. Murphy mentioned that Hunt played in several Utah Junior Golf Association tournaments over the summer, which paid off for the sophomore.
“He played really well,” Murphy said. “He was in a good mood, good body language, very positive out there and just grinding away when he had to.
“It’s good to have him get off to a good start. (He) gets some confidence that he knows that he can play with the top players in our region, and we just need the other kids to kind of get some self-belief that they can belong.”
The challenge will be finding a few golfers who can put together solid performances week in, week out, just in case some of their teammates have a tough round or two. The team’s inexperience might make that more difficult.
“Some of them don’t have as much tournament experience as others,” Murphy said. “It’s just a learning process, and they’ll have to get used to the pressure and play under that. And, you know, playing with a little bit more confidence in these tournaments and see if we can, not turn things around, but start improving every week.”
With all of the youth in Park City’s program, Murphy hopes that the Miners will be dangerous in the coming years. But he’s not setting the bar low for this year’s group, either.
“This year, we can do some damage, we can do some good,” he said. “But over the next couple years, as these kids really develop and get after it, we’ve got a bright future.”