The Dreadnaughts navigated their way to the MHSAA State Finals in golf this past season with a very young team on board. But Dexter benefited from having a senior captian steering the boat – and she also could tee it up with the best of them.
Olivia Napolitan was a first-year player as a senior and was a key contributor on and off the fairways for the Dreads.
“Olivia has a really good golf game, and her work ethic, determination and regularly asking for advice to continuously improve her golf game really stands out to me,” said Dexter Coach Greg Palkowski. “Olivia has a great attitude when she steps on the tee box and her ability to remain focused during the round is just amazing. She has a competitive side while playing golf but at the same time really enjoys the game and has fun playing.
“As a senior, she looked out for the younger players and was always there with a smile to brighten up their day.”
Dexter finished the season with a huge smile, shooting a team score of 805 to tie with Petoskey for 13th place on a chilly and windy day at the MHSAA Division 2 State Finals at Forest Akers West in East Lansing last month.
Napolitan said this year’s team was one of the best group of girls she has ever played with in any sport.
“It was a very new and young team; I was the only senior and there was only one returning player, a junior,” she said. “We had two freshmen who had played before. Myself and the only sophomore never had played golf before. When we first started playing in matches, we realized how successful we were as a team. We knew if we worked hard enough we could make it to the state finals.”
Napolitan said the weeks leading up to Regionals, Coach Palkowksi really pushed them and worked them hard. He knew how good this team was getting and realized a few strokes here and there would make a big difference.
“We were constantly focusing on certain things to improve our scores, such as chipping and putting,” Napolitan says. “Once Regionals hit, we knew as a team we could make states. All that hard work paid off because we made it.”
Napolitan, 17, is a multi-sport athlete at Dexter. She also play women’s lacrosse in the spring and played field hockey since second grade until this year.
“I became interested in golf because my older sister (Gabby Napolitan) played in high school and was very successful,” says Napolitan. “This summer I became serious with golf and I wanted to play more. So I made a very hard decision to stop playing field hockey my senior year and join the golf team.”
It all worked out for everyone. Napolitan had a blast playing golf, was a very good player and helped lead the team to the States. The field hockey team won a D-2 State Title. Win-win!
At States, freshman Avery Manning shot an 83 on the first day and then an 87 on day two for a 170 – just three strokes off a top-10 overall finish. Dexter junior Marissa Genske shot a 202, Napolitan carded a 214, freshman Millie Truesdell fired a 219 and sophomore Eleni Michos had a 227.
While the pressure of playing against the best in the state can be intense,
Napolitan and the Dreads handled it well. “Golf can be very hard mentally,” she says. “You need to train your mindset to not let one bad shot ruin your whole round. My coach would always say to the team, ‘take one shot at a time. If one shot is bad, move on from it.’
“In golf it is very easy to let one bad hole or one bad shot ruin your whole round. I learned to overcome this by just moving on and not think about a previous bad shot. Although it was hard at times, I didn’t let the one shot bother me for the rest of the round; I had to just move on and forget about it.”
Golfers who have been playing the game for years – decades – might not want to read the next part. Apparently, Napolitan only picked up the game this past summer.
“I never thought I’d make the varsity team, let alone go on to the state finals,” she says. “That was quite an accomplishment! One of my personal goals was to continue to improve my game. I had only started golf this July, so I was still learning the basics and wanted to just get better.”
Obviously, the major highlight this season was making Division 2 State Finals as a team.
“We worked so hard to get to this point and all our hard work paid off,” Napolitan says. “Playing at states was such a cool experience. It was so fun staying as a team in the hotel and going to dinner all together. The course we played was very difficult and the weather was also not in our favor and we struggled a little bit.”
One highlight for Napolitan came during Friday’s round. “It was on hole No. 15,” she says. “I chipped in a shot from about 30 yards out. That was exciting! We all just wanted to go out and play golf and have fun and not worry so much about our scores. As a team, we wanted to soak up the atmosphere of being there and playing one last time together.”
Napolitan plans on attending the University of Kentucky next year and will more than likely bring her clubs along. “Now that I have learned the game of golf, I plan to continue to play for fun whenever I can,” she says.
Photos by Ryan Maki Photography
