Throughout the course of a golf season, student-athletes consistently miss multiple days of school a week due to the demanding schedule that comes along with their sport. But even despite the long days and nights of events, many of the players are able to find a way to juggle school and golf in a perfect balance.
Senior Hayden Steinkuehler said that she tries her best to stay up-to-date with her teachers, but nevertheless remains very behind on schoolwork, even after the golf season has been over for some time.
“It is very difficult [to get back on track]. I use my Ac-Labs as much as I can to catch up. I email [my teachers]. Some teachers let me finish the stuff in class and redo the stuff in class, so they’re very understanding about it,” Steinkuehler said.
Head girls and boys golf coach Samuel Haug said that they give their players plenty of opportunities to contact their teachers regarding missed work, and that they make very few exceptions when it comes to poor grades.
“We always try to send our schedule out the Friday before. We really try to preach to our kids [that] you should send an email to all your teachers ahead of time to say something like ‘I am missing Wednesday for a tournament and Thursday I have to leave at 2:30, is there anything I can get caught up on?’,” Haug said. “If we get kids that are behind we just tell them ‘you can’t go to practice’. And [we tell them] that if you can’t go to practice you can’t play in events, and that’s a really good motivating factor for them,”
Steinkuehler believes that if the season was spread out across a few months rather than congested into a month and a half as it is now, they would be able to make the schedule work with school.
“This year especially varsity missed a lot of full day[s] because we had a lot of tournaments in the morning. I think what would help would be to spread out the season because it’s only a month long about, and we have three or four things each week, and I think if they spread out the season it would be easier,” Steinkuehler said.
Haug said that the varying schedule of golf differs from other sports. The contrast from other sports prevents schedules from being changed to avoid absence
“The 18 hole tournaments that we have for the girls, they start at eight o’clock in the morning because they last seven hours. We can’t start an event like that that late in the day and still get it done,” Haug said.
