hello and welcome back to where you get the insight about the athletics here peters township high school i'm your host sydney pendergast and today will be informed about the mental preparation for golf but the head coach of the peters township girls golf team mr l a teacher here at the high school for nine years and has been coaching the golf team for four years with his own knowledge and experience he's able to share information about the sport so can you help tell me how golf differs from any other  but it's so much calmer and the girls have more mental struggles and they have to deal with the bad shots do the good shots and that really changes the way that you coach it's not a hands on experience it's much more of a management  helping girls deal with the way their round is going and how would you say like how would you say how like the golf is more mental than like physical yeah it's definitely a medal game i mean physical helps by no means the girls we still workout we want to get bigger stronger that's one thing but at the end of the day mental toughness in dealing with adversity is what's going to make you a really good golfer you're going to have bad shots it's going to happen especially young golfers are going to have a better maybe even a bad shot each hole it's what do you do with their bad shot and be able to put it behind you make the next one a good shot get yourself out of that hole because it's all about a consistent swing striking the ball consistently putting where you want to put it how are you able to teach that to the players we put up in a lot of situations of practice and then also not even on the golf course to help them with that mental adversity just you know working out more practice in the range we put them in situations that create a little bit of stress i don't want them to practice super comfortably you know i don't want to just be easy show up hit the ball around a couple times to go home i want to put them in a situation where they're going to have to deal with some stress deal with some you know expectations and then have to move on from any bad shot they have and also move on from a good shot that you can't sit around and celebrate all and how do you coach a practice it's all about management more you know putting girls in situations to work on their you know areas where they need improvement we definitely will break up into course practicing on our course so we have more of a home field advantage how do you coach again and well like a mac yeah we we it's more like i said i'm out there making sure the girls have what they  need i'm only allowed to talk to them from green to tee so when they're playing a hole i can't even talk to them other than you go to job growth my fit you know i'm not allowed to anybody encourage so really the biggest thing i think i do is i look for signs met body language that's one thing my girls and after a whole i might call them over to say how's it going talk to them it take their mind off of it or you know some of the girls like to be challenged to be pushed it's really knowing your  players and knowing what they need and just given that a little bit of encouragement i mean there's not too much you can tell somebody in the middle of around this going to save the round it's going to be up to them and they're relying on their practice and their training and believing in themselves how do you physically prepare your players for the matches we do off season training you know mr coon who's the boy's coach he's run a golf cademy for years a lot of my girls are involved in that they do physical training as well as game training also when you look at the girls also lots when coaches they go and see them they see this when coaches to prove their game that's one thing one thing i like to bring to the table is being a coaches coach a lot of other sports like basketball football i like to bring some physical workouts getting stronger and to me also mentally stronger it's not you know it's not about you know building muscle necessarily but having a stronger course of that you can swing consistently at the same level in durance so that you can carry your bag the entire around i mean it's you have to walk we don't have to walk and it's a carrier bag and that can be physically draining a specially in a hot day to be able to swing your club consistently the same way every round how do you like physically prepare your certified personal trainer and she knows a lot more about girls fitness than i do all right so one of the things is you know i do a lot with other sports of weight training and i don't think that's really necessarily appropriate as much for the golf atmosphere so she's going to come in and more role model is just not going to happen so i'm excited to bring that into them and have that positive female role model for them to be around what do you usually look for during like the tryouts or like any of the matches well we're pretty objective it means that your scores your average is your average and i'm looking for outside of what you're scoring definitely your body language the huge sign to me i want girls that can handle a bad shot move on to the next one and then also be a model of that to their team especially the upper classmen girls how do you handle yourself on the course taking your good shots take your bad shots what do you do with them and that body language that you show because if you're having a bad round it can be a real grind and you'll see it on the girl's face and how do they deal with that adversity is really what i look for outside of you know what scores like how would you recommend like one of like the freshman players or something to like obviously it's a financial commitment that's outside of the district so it's always positive to do that but it's not necessary you don't have to do it you can meet together with the girls gotta play you know i obviously girls want to get together with me i can give them a hand you know that's what i'm here for really want to encourage them to play deal with their good rounds enjoy their good rounds lard from their bad rounds and just get physically stronger and mentally stronger how do you encourage that for the team like as a whole one of the things i like to do is we're going to have a team golf league in the offseason and i want to bring back alumni and have girls that are in middle school that to play our girls bring back the alumni have them all together and play in a league where they're competing against each other and really in a fun positive manner so that when they're out they're playing at least ten fifteen rounds from a and so we start  august i mean that's getting out there once a week is really a good way to do it because only by playing consistently and a large amount can you really start to see signs of improvement if you're just going to show up and hope that you're going to score is going to drop by coming to r c offseason workouts which we're going to starting here in a couple weeks you know making me and my assistant coach and a swim coach if you to have a part of your training program one of the things is most of these girls don't have enough experience to just do it themselves you need to bring an expert somebody that can help you all right that could be for some egos an excellent players that are parents that could be parents can help you it could be a swing coach you could be myself mr coon mr lacy my system because you just have to go out and find somebody to help you learn the game it's really hard to teach it yourself and then on top of that like i said coming to our workouts to get stronger and then being a part of our offseason league and getting out of playing with your teammates who will be your really good team the four years leading up to this year this year a little bit of a down year as far as record is concerned i look at it we had a ton of improvement so i mean i look at that that's that's what matters but record wise we were down a bit this  year and i think that's just to do to youthen it experience like on the course i'm really excited about our future we have some really talented freshmen coming in we had a very talented freshman who was our number one from beginning to end last year i'll make roberts she was our number one goal for the entire season that doesn't happen very often freshman i think the last person to that was a girl by name and you can as you want to detail so of really excited about that and hopefully you know we're going to see that prove it in a record i definitely expect to see improvement in our players and i really think we can compete for the section issue how was the team different without that superstar i think that you know it's that whole watch as she did it she's a great leader she taught so much to her teammates about the things that don't have to do with your score obviously there was a change in the wins and losses with our scores i mean everybody knew that was going to happen walking into the season it's hard to replace somebody that averages p or it's very very difficult to do that but i think her legacy more than anything is what she taught the girls the mentality the desire to get better and also just the way she carried herself she was the  picture of mental toughness on a golf course you never knew if you have a good round or a bad round and mr farrel was her main coach chico sure for his for her for years and she and i was the assistant coach that time and what always impressed me about me was when she turned in her score card she walked up to you and she handed to you and then she walked away if she could have a thirty two she could have a forty two it didn't matter if she could have the round of her life or the worst round of the year every round was treated as this is my has been there when disaster strikes to learn how you can protect your entire family go to america going back so why did you choose to coach golf i got bamboozled basically about five years ago four years ago mr farrell who like i said was the girl's coach for a number of years before myself he called me he needed help this wrote i have friends anyways and we played golf together a lot and he called me and he had a huge class coming and he had nine girls coming in a soft morse and he wanted to start a j v program and he just asked me would i be willing to dedicate the time and that's i'm always been a volunteer that's you know it's a great up to i love golf really enjoy it i love coaching you know and really coaching girls go off your peters and the girls are great they're so nice are girls that yeah sure i'll do that and i got stuck you know that it was a lot of fun you know that those years we were going to states as a team we were going you know me with the states all four years she was here was a lot of success really stuck to me and really really enjoy it now go off community here piers real strong great family so that's kind of how i got now i'm still here so what is here like philosophy as for coaching golf my philosophy really in any kind of coaching  is it's all about teaching girls or guys or whoever the porton of dedicating yourself and sacrificing yourself to accomplish a goal especially a team i think that's what people learn from sports winning losing great that's awesome if you can win if you lose that stinks but you know it's you're still going to have a great learning experience in sports specially in golf what can i accomplish if i dedicate myself and i'm willing to give of myself for that goal so i'm really big with all my players the stablish in not only as a team goal but we are personal goals and what are you going to do to achieve it every single day so how do you plan on improving your coaching from like year to year the biggest thing for me is i'm looking to improve my knowledge of the game i did not play going until i graduate from college and i come from a basketball family we what we did we played football with the best will my dad up until his retirement you know golf  ton and just continuing to build to help my girls improve their game and especially those girls that are fine tuning like a girl like elihu suiting so well what can i do to help her beyond just the mental aspect so i had you continue with golf like the late doing of the girls are great you know i didn't want to you know mr fernald right he decided that he wanted to step down and i wanted to keep that continuity we had something good go on and you know i really wanted those girls to have the continuity nothing changed really brian and i have very similar style philosophy and beliefs so i wanted to keep that going for the girls keep that continuity and then also give myself a personal challenge i've never been a head coach befor e you know i've done a lot of coaching but it was up to beat the guy and i really want to challenge myself so how do you like to set goals throughout your coaching experience i set goals myself as a coach obviously but i see goals in the team team level and then when it comes to the girls individually my goals don't necessarily allied with you know shaving this many strokes or shaving them in strokes i look at more of a bit more of an objective style saying i want to see this girl  so i want to see this girl prove mentally i want to see her grind out a her average when she's having a bad day like just those little mental toughness things and then really my big goals i set for the team or let's you know compete for the section and let's be at the would be all playoffs we should be in with the playoffs every year we have that talent that's where we need to be and then finally just helping see those girls understand my philosophy and hopefully br have your goals that you set for yourself how they help the team i like to think so i hope so you know i thought the girls are such sweethearts they're so thankful they take so much time to thank me you know it and feel kind of silly sometimes i'm doing well thank you the workers are they seem so open to what i'm telling them to do and they want to do those things and and i think they're getting across i believe that my coaching is getting across to them and i really think that this year next year as we're getting a little bit horse where we really young right now we're going to see the fruits of that and how are you challenge throughout like  challenges is continuing the success we have a such a tradition of success here with both our boys and girls golf programs it's a lot of standard to live up to and i don't want to be the guy that can live a movie you know so i want to make sure that we're still keep things going and continuing  with positive record to move forward so have you like challenge to your teen as like a whole i look at them and i challenge them to get out and get better you know i want to see them doing things to make i watch a practice i know what they're good at i know what they struggle with i have the girls keep track of where their strokes are happening are your strokes on the green are you adding five strokes i'm putting for you because you can hit the ball up to the green inside and those areas and we look at that and said how that girl just focus on she's really good at they have to put their course their score on the scorecard they don't get to work together in that sense so it's really about putting them in positions to help them succeed some girl a girl that's very you know socially experienced girl and spent fully tough putting her against a younger girl from the other team and just being able to compete that or a girl that's very mentally tough but she might not be our number one but let's put her against their number one so that when that girl's going and scorn really really well she can handle that better than maybe this other girl that is still young and learning to focus on her own game and how do you encourage that to play or is toast talking to do a lot of in the side is a bit of conversations talk to him as a team making sure they're enjoying themselves and make sure they believe in themselves and it's really one the most important you have to believe that you can do it and make sure that they don't believe in and so effort mr curry helps a lot with our athletic department helps a lot with that the girl's parents and their family play a big role what colleges they want to go to and we get those scores out of them the biggest thing that i'll be doing is talking to this question tell them what kind of player these girls  what can they expect from them will they be good that's pretty well that's all we have for today thank you mr laurence for coming in the show in thank you for sharing information about golf so we were able to understand the mental and physical parts of it we also learned about the team as a whole and how they train in season and lastly we learned about their ethics that mr lawrence puts in me making coach coaching hall fun very enjoyable for everyone and thank you and make sure to tune into the n