The Liberty Christian Academy golf team had a successful inaugural season this spring.
The Eagles started a boys golf team this spring.The team’s highlight of the season was winning a Christian school tournament in Joplin. Liberty Christian golf coach Kameron Bagby noted the conditions at the tournament were less than ideal, with about a quarter inch of rain in the fairways.
“It rained a lot at that tournament,” Bagby said. “I think our guys’ ability to adapt helped them a lot. The rain kind of took away the advantage that some of the more experienced golfers had.”
The team exceeded expectations overall this season, Bagby said. Bagby believes the players had high quality short games for how new they were to the sport.
“They got a lot better at everything,” Bagby said. “Just way more consistent.”
Liberty Christian competed in an event early in the season in which Warrenton High School also competed. Warrenton golfers helped walk the Liberty Christian golfers through the process of competing in a golf competition. Bagby believes this helped the Liberty Christian golfers get used to competing at the high school level.
“They’re friends with the Warrenton guys so they kind of walked them through the ropes and helped them out at their first one,” Bagby said. “They were able to feel a lot more comfortable after that.”
Bagby noted the school’s decision to field a golf team this past spring was a last minute decision. He noted players will be able to prepare for the season next school year, which he believes will benefit the Eagle golfers.
Bagby expects the roster size to grow next year. They had one player graduate. Both juniors expect to return to the team next season, Bagby said. Bagby added he has talked with a few other students about playing on the team next season.
“I think it’ll grow,” Bagby said. “And I think now that I’ll have seniors that have had a year of experience under their belt, hopefully they’ll be able to get the other guys up to speed and kind of get this thing going for real.”
Bagby is looking forward to what the team can accomplish next season.
“We wanted to win as much as we could,” Bagby said. “We just went into it knowing we were going to have a good time and practice hard. It was a welcome surprise that we were actually able to go out and win a tournament. It was really cool.”
