MANITOWOC (NBC 26) — Manitowoc Lincoln will now have a girls' golf team for the first time.
- Chris Grodek campaigned to add the team after enough girls showed interest
- Olivia Rabitz has played golf for five years and will have her own team for the very first time
- The team starts play this fall
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
Golf is a game of opportunity. That’s a phrase that has a new meaning for the Manitowoc Lincoln girls golfers. Despite their hard work, the girls have never had a team to call their own until now.
"I've been playing since 7th grade,” said Olivia Rabitz.
Rabitz is a junior at Manitowoc Lincoln, and since she started playing, the Manitowoc Lincoln girls have had to find spots on the boys’ team.
"I just feel, not so much forgotten about, but in the shadows,” she said.
Enter longtime Manitowoc Lincoln golf coach Chris Grodek.
"I was bugging our athletic director saying, 'What do you think? I've got enough girls. What do you think?’” said Grodek.
The athletic department decided he was right. For the first time, the Manitowoc Lincoln girls will have their own team this fall.
"It's so much more exciting,” said Rabitz. “To try something new. To actually golf with other girls and not just a bunch of guys."
Coach Grodek says the girls can now compete in their own tournament and maybe even make it to state.
"They need to have that belief in themself,” he told me. “To play to their own abilities"
Coach Grodek says that the next step is to get a simulator and more inside space to practice so that when it's cold, they don't have to use his classroom.
