By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — In 2015, Lucas Hatley’s first season as Salisbury’s girls golf coach, it was reasonably close to business as usual for the Hornets.
There was another county championship, plus a runner-up finish in the Central Carolina Conference to a very strong West Davidson program.
Salisbury’s East-Carolina bound senior Grace Yatawara won the 1A/2A individual state championship last October, and temmates Shelby Holden and Caroline Parrott were good enough that Salisbury finished fifth in the team scoring.
That was a more than respectable effort, but Salisbury had a three-person team and all three girls were seniors.
It was assumed the Hornets wouldn’t field a team at all this year, but Hatley, a history teacher with some knowledge of Salisbury’s proud golf history under previous coach Dale Snyder, didn’t want to let that happen.
“We started making announcements last year that any girl interested in playing golf should come see me,” Hatley said. “And one girl did.”
That girl was softball player Abby Robinette.
It takes a minimum of three girls to post team scores at matches, but soon Salisbury had the foundation of a unit. Credit Robinette. She was able to recruit two of her friends — Madison Day and Ana Romero.
“I think they’d all been on a golf course before, but they were all very new to competitive golf, ” Hatley said. “We started going out to the course once a week in July, and we started with extreme basics. When they all started to show improvement, we decided we could field a team.”
The girls got a boost from Jack and Nancy Bilson.
“They’d lived out at Crescent and they were moving to a retirement center and they had a lot of golf clubs,” Hatley said. “ They basically donated two full sets of clubs to the school, and it really helped the program out.”
For girls who began playing in July, the Hornets did well.
Four of the six CCC schools — West Davidson, East Davidson, Salisbury and Lexington — competed in the conference tournament last week. Salisbury finished third, which could make a difference when they start deciding conference cups and things like that.
The scores weren’t like those Yatawara and Isabella Rusher had put up in recent years, but these were girls still learning the game. Robinette shot 119 in the tournament. Day shot 121. Romero shot 123.
Day led the Hornets for the season. Day and Robinette made All-CCC, while Romero just missed.
The Hornets also competed in Thursday’s Rowan County Championships at the Country Club of Salisbury.
Again, their scores weren’t phenomenal — Day 114, Robinette 119 and Romero 123 — but what mattered was that the Hornets, the perennial county champions and six-time state champions, were represented.
“Absolutely, it meant a lot to just be able to go out and compete,” Hatley said. “Our program was fifth in the state last year. We didn’t want it to sink to not having a team.”
The famed black shirts and red skirts were out there swinging, and Hatley is optimistic the Hornets will be able to field a team again in 2017.
But he’s facing a new challenge. Day, Robinette and Romero are all seniors, so he’ll be starting from scratch again.
“We’ll start over,” he said. “We’ll make announcements and hope that more girls come forward like these girls did. Hopefully, some freshmen will want to play. That would be ideal.”
The story has a happy ending. Hatley said Romero, Robinette and Day plan to stick with a sport they can pursue for a lifetime.
“All of them plan to continue to play as they go forward,” Hatley said. “They’re even talking about investing in new sets of clubs.”