FRUITPORT – A big part of the fun of high school golf is the team element.

The golfers compete on their own, of course, but they usually have a group of teammates to hang out with, root for, turn to for support, and compete with for team championships.

Fruitport junior Maddie Anderson did not have that benefit this year, at least to a very large degree.

She played with a full team as a freshman and sophomore and had a great time, but the Trojans graduated several seniors in the spring, and there weren’t many girls taking their place this fall.

Fruitport started the season with two players, added a recruit in the early weeks, then lost one player to a non-golf injury and was reduced to two players again.

“It was a big change in the beginning,” said Anderson, who has been preparing for Tuesday’s Division 2 regional tournament. “I wasn’t used to having so much attention on me, but that was also good, because my teammates and I got a lot of extra help from our coaches, and more attention focused on the things we were struggling with.

“Having a small team didn’t do much for us in terms of team bonding, but in other ways it was equally enjoyable. It was just different.”

Anderson has allowed that difference to stand in her way on the golf course.

After two years of showing promise, she had already decided that she was going to work extra hard to improve her game and take a big step up this year.

She has done exactly that.

Anderson started the season with the goal of finishing among the top 10 individuals in every meet or tournament, and she only missed it by one.

In multi-team events, she finished in second place once, fourth place twice, sixth place once, seventh place once and nine place once.

The came the final O-K Silver conference jamboree of the season, hosted by Fruitport at its home Oakridge Golf Club.

Anderson rose to the top of her game, shooting the best nine-hole score of her career, a 39, and finishing in first place in the individual standings.

It was a great season highlight for a girl who pushed herself hard over the past few months.

“That was very exciting,” Anderson said. “It was a very, very good day. I would say everything went well.

“I felt very happy. It was nice to hear everybody saying they were proud of my accomplishment and how far I have come. It was very cool because I had a lot of family come to watch me that day.”

‘I can do this!’

Anderson has been around golf for most of her life.

She recalls going out to the course with her father and grandfather lots of time, beginning at a very young again, and playing from time to time.

But she never took the sport very seriously until she reached high school.

“Every year we have family vacations up north, and we always play at Wild Bluff,” Anderson said. “I am always in a scramble with my dad, my brother and my grandpa, and that was the only time I ever took it seriously.

“But I talked to (Fruitport coach Brenda Hansen) before my freshman year, and she said she needed girls on the team, so I figured I may as well try it out and see if it was worth it, and it ended up being really fun.”

Anderson showed some promise in her freshman season, then started showing real potential last year as a sophomore, finishing among the top eight individuals in the O-K Silver and earning All-Conference honors for the first time.

That first taste of success ignited Anderson’ competitive fire, because she realized she could succeed and do even better.

“This summer I was finally able to drive, so I could get out on the course more often,” Anderson said. “I was able to get more reps in than the previous two years, and that helped me get more consistent.

“I really wanted to do good this year and improve my stats. I had a goal for this year, to make All-Conference again and do better at regionals. I knew to do that I would have to put in more work.”

She started having success right away this season, finishing second and first individually in a pair of dual matches against Western Michigan Christian and Muskegon Catholic Central.

Then came the conference season, where she started finishing among the top golfers in the O-K Silver every outing.

She started with a great second place finish at the Belding jamboree with a nine-hole score of 41, followed by a fourth-place finish at the NorthPointe Christian jamboree, a fourth-place finsh at the Calvin Christian jamboree and a sixth-place finish at the Hopkins jamboree.

The Trojans also competed in the 18-hole Newaygo Invitational, where Anderson finished in seventh place with a strong score of 96.

As the top-1o finishes started to pile up, she realized her good play was not a fluke.

‘”Honestly not in the beginning,” Anderson said, when asked whether she really expected to consistently finish in the top 10 all season. “Then it started to occur to me, about halfway through the season, that, yeah, I can do this!”

Ready for regionals

Coach Hansen said it’s all been the result of Anderson’s hard work, and her willingness to accept advice from people who know the game.

“She has been pretty focused her entire high school career about looking for different ways to improve her game, and she worked with the Muskegon Community College coach, Ted Tallefson, near the beginning of the season,” Hansen said. “That went really well.

“He looked at her swing and said it was good, then they moved to the putting green. He talked to her about what a good putting grip looks like, and about her stance, and really focused on tempo, so she was not jabbing at the ball when she was putting.

“Now she is shooting more consistently in the 40s. She is more comfortable around the greens and with her approach shots. She has always been confident about teeing off.”

Hansen was thrilled with the way Anderson finished the regular season, with the first place finish at the home jamboree, followed by a sixth-place finish at the conference finals just one day later.

She ended up finishing fifth in the overall conference season standings and earned All-Conference honors for the second year in a row.

“She was so excited about that,” Hansen said about the first-place finish. “She was just playing so well that day, then it carried over to Tuesday in our conference championship.”

Anderson had one not-so-good outing this year, when she finished 15th at the Greater Muskegon Athletic Association tournament against all the other top high school golfers in Muskegon County.

“I was struggling with the mental part of the game,” she said. “I was still pretty tired from the weekend before, and that got to me on the course.”

She would like to do a lot better at Tuesday’s regionals than she did last year, when she shot an 18-hole score of 111 and finished 40th.

Anderson said Tuesday’s regionals will be a big personal challenge for her. She will be competing against a lot of great golfers from throughout West Michigan, and playing on a course – Lincoln Golf Club on Whitehall Road – that she hasn’t had a lot of success on in the past.

“I just want to shoot a better round,” she said. “I am not expecting to take a certain place. I will be happy with a better score than I have had before on that course. I have not played very good at that course.”

Regardless of what happens at regionals, Anderson is looking forward to taking another step forward in her senior season next fall.

She is also hoping her success will inspire more of her classmates to come out for golf next season, so the Trojans can have a full team again.

“I realize that golf is not exactly the most popular sport to play, but it should be,” she said. “It’s so fun and very rewarding.

“I want to help grow the program.”