Three years ago, freshman Paisley McCoy started her journey playing golf. She started the sport because “it was a different sport that I’d never tried before,” she said. 

Now McCoy is concluding her first year on La Salle’s girls golf team. 

When McCoy started playing golf she “thought it was probably the worst sport ever because I had never held a golf club,” she said. But now, she enjoys playing it, especially since on the La Salle golf team she is surrounded by fellow teammates who also haven’t played before. 

One thing that McCoy finds fun is all the team bonding. The beginning of the season created one of her favorite team bonding memories when everyone met and at first were scared to talk to each other, but ended up all clicking together once they started to play. 

McCoy used to play basketball, and has missed the team aspect of the sport, but also likes golf as it is more individualized because she is not a very competitive person. 

McCoy describes the season as “it’s been rough and it’s also been a lot of fun” she said.

She enjoys the fact that her teammates can all talk with each other and understand each other. As a freshman on varsity, McCoy feels that she has been able to get better and spend more time with the coaches for help. Her biggest accomplishment is making varsity because she did have some doubts about where she would make it during tryouts. 

At the beginning of the season, McCoy set a goal to get better especially with her irons and drivers. She also thought that being a freshman on varsity would be overwhelming, “because it made it seem like everybody was expecting you to do really good,” she said. Yet she has found out that no matter how well she played, her team would support her. 

Throughout the season she has been able to make friends with everyone on the team, especially the fellow members on varsity as she spends the most time with them. 

Overall, this season the golf team has been “really good,” even though “there are definitely some places that we need improvement,” she said.

Golf has taught her how to be patient and communicate as she feels it’s easy to talk to people who also play golf. 

When not playing with her team members, McCoy plays golf with her dad. “[It’s] very fun but also stressful because he’s a lot better than me,” she said. 

McCoy’s favorite course to play is Charbonneau in Wilsonville “because I feel like we’ve practiced there so many times that I just kind of have it under control,” she said. Her most difficult course she has played is Forest Hills in Hillsboro because of the amount of par 5’s on the course and hills. When she encounters hard courses she “hopes for the best and if I feel like I’m going to a harder course I’ll push myself to practice harder before going out to play,” she said. 

Her role models for golf are her coaches because they are able to spend time with each player while still running the team. 

When it comes to school her favorite classes are English I with Mr. Greg Larson and Theater Production and Design with Mr. Michael Shelton. Being a freshman, she feels that her first year has been really good. “I feel like everyone there is usually extremely nice and welcoming,” she said.