ON COURSE: Members of the Princeton High girls’ golf team are all smiles as they display the plaque they earned last week for placing first in the Mercer County Tournament at Mercer Oaks West. Pictured, from left, are Kyuyoung Chung, Jackie Zang, Tia Sindhu, Shreya Gaekwad, and Yasna Shahriarian. Last Monday, PHS followed up the county title with a third-place finish in the Central Jersey sectional at Rutgers University Golf Course in Piscataway. The Tigers finished one stroke ahead of Bridgewater-Raritan for the final qualifying spot for the state championships that will be held May 14 at Raritan Valley Country Club in Bridgewater.

By Justin Feil

Tia Sindhu elected to cover up the scores when she opened the live scoring app used in high school golf competitions this year. She prefers to write it down on paper, but never does the math until the end.

“When I write it down, I’m not adding my score or anything in my head,” said Sindhu, a member of the Princeton High girls’ golf team. “I just write it down, keep playing with my game, kind of to keep me in the same zone because once I start adding up my score I feel like things go wrong at that point because then I start analyzing and thinking, which is not what you want to do. You just want to stay in the moment and keep playing the best golf that you can.”

The lone senior on the PHS team had no idea how the team had done when she finished her round in the Mercer County Tournament last Thursday at Mercer Oaks West, and it added to her thrill to discover that the Tiger girls’ golf team had repeated as MCT champion, edging runner-up Lawrenceville School by a single stroke.

“It felt amazing and I think it felt even more special this year because it’s my last season playing for Princeton and I really wanted to make the most of it,” said Sindhu. “I feel like all of our girls played so well. I think we were all in the right mindset in the beginning and we were just ready to ready to win this, ready to keep the Mercer County title the second year.”

Junior star Jacqueline Zang led the Tigers with a one-over 73. Kyuyoung Chung shot 78, Sindhu had an 81, Yasna Shahriarian shot 94, and Shreya Gaekwad carded a 97. Their 326 total won the hotly contested county crown over Lawrenceville with third-place Peddie School 20 strokes back.

“It was slightly different than last year,” said PHS head coach Jess Monzo. “I think last year’s team really excelled throughout the year. This year there were some other teams that any given day could shoot really, really well and today was no walk in the park. It was still tough. We wound up winning the tournament by one stroke.”

PHS followed up the county title with a third-place finish in the Central Jersey sectional at Rutgers University Golf Course in Piscataway. They finished one stroke ahead of Bridgewater-Raritan for the final qualifying spot for the state championships that will be held May 14 at Raritan Valley Country Club in Bridgewater. It’s quite an accomplishment for a PHS team that didn’t use the same five it had last year.

“We do have a pretty different group this year, which is cool,” said Monzo. “Jackie’s sister [Madeleine], who is playing at UPenn right now, obviously she graduated, but the rest of the lineup was young last year. They’re all on the team again this year and they’re all shooting well, but it’s crazy to think the academic workload that these girls have and then they’re playing.”

Sindhu is one of the holdovers from last year along with Zang. Chung is a talented sophomore who played this year for the first time after focusing on an advanced course load her first year of high school. Gaekwad is a junior who got her first chance to play at counties this year after being on the team last year, and Shahriarian is a freshman.

“The girls are so, so close and so silly and so goofy at the same time,” said Monzo. “They know how to play golf, they’re very good, but they are like a ball of energy. They’re so fun.”

Sindhu has been having a lot more fun since PHS split to have a girls team option, and now the Tiger girls have won the county in their first two seasons. Sindhu has been the only girls player in her grade since she started freshman year. She has had more opportunity to show her ability with the girls team and become a valuable part of the champions whereas she was in the shadows with the co-ed team.

“I felt like I wasn’t able to play the golf that I knew I could, and especially with all my experience it just didn’t feel very welcoming at first,” said Sindhu. “But as we started to make a girls’ team, I felt so confident, so comfortable. It’s just been a so much better experience and I know that Coach Monzo knows the potential that I have and he can see it. I guess I feel like it’s been valued more these past two years, which is great.”

Sindhu sees a team full of talented players. That skill level has helped the PHS girls be so successful. For the second straight season, they were unbeaten through the regular season with an 8-0 record, which was a credit to their depth.

“None of us are really relying on just one or two people,” said Sindhu. “We’re all combined shooting very good, and I think that’s what makes us feel a lot more confident because we all know we can shoot good. And once we do it, it’s great for the team overall.”

The regular season success and the practice that Princeton had put in together gave Sindhu and the Tigers confidence heading into the county tournament.

“They just believe in themselves,” said Monzo. “They know what they can do. They’ve seen each other play a lot of golf. A lot of them belong to the same country club, so that a lot of them play with each other throughout the year. They know what they can do and they know if they all shoot well — they don’t have to shoot lights out, they don’t have to shoot their best round ever — but they know if I do this, if you do that, we’ll be OK.”

Sindhu tried to reinforce that idea. She offered veteran advice and positivity to the team and emphasized the fun that they were having together chasing a county crown.

“I think I was ready from the beginning at the driving range,” said Sindhu. “I kept telling our team things like, ‘we’re going to win this, it’s all good,’ kind of keeping them not too stressed out because we do have a freshman and sophomore who never played in the counties before, so they were definitely a little nervous. So I was kind of just keeping that calm mentality. It was great.”

Throughout her round — one of the best of her career — it helped that the group she was with was encouraging and supportive of each other. Every stroke ended up mattering for PHS, which had no room to spare when it was all said and done.

“It really came down to our number four and five golfers on both teams,” said Monzo. “And every one of those girls shot under 100.”

PHS wasn’t entirely sure how the year would go when it graduated a Division I player in Zang. But the Tigers have proven they could overcome that loss and put together another trophy winning group.

“In the beginning we were a little bit, I wouldn’t say scared, but just a little bit nervous,” said Sindhu. “Kind of because of losing one of one of our very good players. Little did we know we had an amazing freshman and sophomore joining this year. Having another year being undefeated and playing so well as a team, it’s just been great and I’m not surprised that we’re undefeated now. It’s just such a good feeling that two years in a row we can play great golf.”

Next year, the Tigers will be moving on from Sindhu. She will be playing club golf at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, where she intends to study computer science. It’s a bit ironic maybe that Tia Sindhu chose then to ignore the advanced scoring technology that would have allowed her to follow PHS’s progress at her final county tournament.

“I had no clue,” said Sindhu. “I definitely was rooting for us to win, but I was not checking it at all. I kind of felt like I was playing good for what I could have done for my team, so I was happy with that. And then I got even happier at the end when the team won.”