No, I don’t mean hot tea, iced tea, green tea, or gossip. I mean the little plastic stake that holds up the golf ball before the player eagerly swings away, hoping to get the ball as close to the flag as possible. With the tee comes the ball, the putter, and the player themselves. I got the opportunity to sit down with two of the nine current players on the Enloe Women’s Golf team: Vinisha Velmineti and Tia Burmi, who spilled the tea about what golf is really about.  

The thing with golf is that most people are unaware of how it works, especially with high school teams. For practice, the girls will play a few rounds of golf or go to the driving range. Coach Jeff Simpson picks the top five girls to play against other schools. The top three scores from each team are added up, and that is how they get the score. Besides the competition part of it, Tia says “I like [playing golf for Enloe] because it gives me a sense of community. I made a lot of new friends, which helped me a lot freshman year.”

Vinisha picked golf up quickly, and was inspired to start playing by a close friend’s love for golf. Vinisha practiced for only two months before joining the team in her sophomore year, and it is clear that her efforts paid off, and will continue to pay off. Like Vinisha, Tia practices hard, and loves the team because of how close the girls are. For both of them, golf seemed to come naturally.  

Most of the girls on the team are relatively new to golf; however, their efforts to support one another are immeasurable to any other Enloe sport team. “We all have been learning together, and we all bond that way”, Vinisha said. She also comments on how small crowds are at matches; however, the girls know that they play to better themselves, as well as their fellow teammates, and not necessarily to impress anyone standing by. Although it would be nice for others to attend their matches, Vinisha says “It is nice not to have all of that pressure.” 

Vinisha plans to play club golf in college, and she hopes to continue the sport throughout her adult life. Tia wants to play golf in college as well, and she looks forward to seeing how far the sport can take her. All in all, the real tea is that golf is not a boring sport– but rather a sport that requires immense mental focus, maturity, grace, and a whole lot of those little plastic stakes.