Senior captain of the St. Paul Academy girls golf team Shelby Tietel strives to create a fun loving atmosphere even in the toughest moments. Tietel believes that in order to become proficient in the sport, one must work on both their long and short games as much as possible.

“Practice is determined by the players since our team is so small. We work on either long game, short game, both, or whatever we feel we need to work on most. Then we will play games that help us practice those things or just hit a lot of balls while having fun and getting practice in,” Tietel said.

As a captain, Tietel leads her team through their warm up stretches. Although they may miss out on warming up their putts and chips, they have a fun time anyway.

“For most of our major matches, a lot of the teams tend to putt and chip to warm up before starting but our team typically is having so much fun that we forget to warm up because we’re talking and joking too much,” Tietel said.

Tietel leads her team through stretches and warm ups, and believes that having the little things before a competition constant and reliable helps with performance.

“As a captain I choose teams for games, and lead stretches before a match. I make sure that everyone is on the bus before matches. Kathryn, the other captain, and I just try to help newer girls as much as possible by giving them some tips and tricks to the game,” Tietel said.

The Girls Golf team realizes that they are an underdog for winning state, but the team strives to do well in competition and believes that the best way to increase participation and skill is to make the sport as enjoyable as possible.

“Competitions are usually the most exciting part of the sport. It is always fun because we realize that we will not likely win state or anything major, so for us it’s really about having a good time with each other and with the sport,” Tietel said.

With the loss of 2015-16 seniors on many of the other teams, Tietel believes that the team will perform admirably in sections this season, and plans on leaving her team in good shape for next year.

“Our conference has 6 teams and we are usually 4th out of the 6. The top three teams are significantly better than the bottom three so we usually end up in the middle. This year, the top three teams graduated a lot of seniors so now it’s looking like we’ll get higher out of the 6, which is a great improvement from last year. Otherwise, everyone is just trying their best to keep shooting low scores. It’s both a team and an individual thing,” Tietel said.

Tietel describes that being a part of the Girls Golf team is part individual skill, but that more often than not, the closeness of the team is what really matters.