Hazen girls golf wins a banner

By Haley Ausbun • October 17, 2019 1:30 am
Photo courtesy of Victor Yee. The Hazen girls golf team is taking home the championship banner for the first time in its history.
Photo courtesy of Victor Yee. The Hazen girls golf team is taking home the championship banner for the first time in its history.

Before this season, golf was the only sport in the Hazen high School gym without a championship banner.

But not anymore.

Hazen’s girls team has had a historic season, going undefeated at 10-0 and taking home the gold at the North Puget Sound League championship. Thanks to hard work in the offseason, and young blood coming into games, the team turned it around in the past two years.

Victor Yee has been the head coach for two years and an assistant coach before that. Yee said some of the highlights of this season included the team capturing a banner and beating Kentwood, which in the four-year history of the league, has never lost a match. Kentwood was the two-time league champions.

Hazen is also the first team to score more than 100 points on average in eight out of the 10 matches. Before this year, only one team had hit over 100.

Yee said they are just lucky to have such talented girls on the team, and young athletes that will continue. Bailey Lengfelder, a sophomore, was the team’s lead golfer and improved from 17.6 to 22.4 points per match.

This was Lengfelder’s second season on the team, but she’s been playing golf since she was little. She said it’s been a solid season so far, and a lot of the team has improved through working hard in the offseason. Lengfelder said she also started participating in national tournaments and focusing on private lessons to get better.

“We’re doing really well. Even if one person doesn’t have the best week, we have each other to back it up,” Lengfelder said. “Overall we’ve had a really good team dynamic and supporting each other more than last year.”

Senior co-captains Kaelan Lestock and Jade Egan also improved their scores this season. Lestock went from a 12.3 scoring average to 17.2 and Jade Egan improved from a 12.1 average to a 17.9 average. Kaelan and Jade earned all-NPSL second-team honors.

Lucy Villasenor, a freshman, broke the Hazen score for a single match, with a 37 for nine holes. Lucy was third in all of NPSL scoring and also took all-NSPL first-team honors. Dominik Datangel, a sophomore, improved from a 14.4 points per match to 17.1 points per match. Datangel earned all-NPSL second-team honors.

Hazen had two athletes out of six on the first-team NPSL team and three athletes out of six on the second-team NPSL squad.

Hazen also won the two-day NPSL tournament by 38 strokes, with Lengfelder taking sixth. Yee was voted Coach of the Year by his fellow league coaches.