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| Wilton head girl's golf coach Jamie Meyer, left, and Tipton senior golfer Kailee Meyer have had a unique spring season. Contributed photo. |
By Ryan Stonebraker
As a dad, you steal memories where you can of your kids and cherish them forever. For Wilton girl’s golf coach and Tipton resident Jamie Meyer one of those times happened last golf season at the Wilton Invitational. There, daughter Kailee, then a junior, won the medalist honors at the 18-hole meet in the spring of 2016. As expected, the coach of the home meet awards the top players with medals and gives out the team scores. This time, when he got to the medalist, Meyer got to announce his daughter as the winner.
“Golf is the least spectated sport in high school. I have gotten the rare opportunity to watch my daughter play a sport that I love. I’ve gotten to share my knowledge with my kids in Wilton, but, I also get to be a dad and watch Kailee because Tipton has been in many of our meets,” said Jamie.
“I can watch her from afar. Last year at our tournament here in Wilton. It was cool, Kailee was the meet medalist and I got to shake her hand and announce her as having the low score for the day. I got some grief from my kids ‘Coach, it’s Rigged”, but it was all in fun, and they know Kailee well enough to tease her. If I am just Jamie dad, I wouldn’t have had that opportunity and I probably would not have been at the meet because invitationals are during the day and for most people, it’s hard to get away during the day, “ he said.
For both Jamie and Kailee Meyer and their family in Tipton, this golf season has been special. Kailee, now a senior and will graduate next week, leads Tipton’s golf team and is one of three seniors in the Tigers lineup. Jamie, works for the Wilton community school district as the curriculum and professional development leader and girl’s golf coach.
Kaillee Meyer, statistically is the best golfer in the River Valley Conference South. She leads the RVC South in scoring average per 9 holes with a 47.14 average and is tops in the combined 9 & 18 course rating average with a score of 49.25. Both averages rank in the top-20 for class 2A among all 2A golfers.
Meyer put in a lot of time this summer getting ready for her senior season, having a goal to play 36 holes of golf a week and spend 3-4 days at the golf course. She said that getting to the state meet was something the Tigers realized early they had a shot at.
“I guess it was always there. We look at our averages and other teams averages after the duals. We were like, yeah we are pretty good, but then we finished 2nd and 3rd at two invites and won our home invite,” she said.
The Tigers sport an outstanding 40-3 record going into the district meet and have a team nine-hole average of 197.62 which is third in class 2A for 9-hole, top-4 players total average. They are sixth in 18-hole average for their top-4 players total.
Jamie Meyer has led the Beavers to back-to-back district appearances this week and the 2017 River Valley Conference golf title. The Beavers are led by seniors Alyssa Anderson and Eleney Owens and Tess Kerkhof. Anderson and Kerkhof were on the RVC Elite team at the conference meet and Owens was on the honorable mention team.
Meyer coached golf at Tipton for nine years and is in his third season with the Beavers. He had led eight teams to the district round of the postseason and led the Tipton boy’s golf team to state three times.
“A lot of people think it’s weird, but I am used to dad coaching Wilton. It is kind of nice to have him around, but I told him that he can’t follow me around on the course. It doesn’t really bother me though that he coaches at another school,” said Kailee.
Though he is not her high school coach, Meyer does get a few questions from time to time from his daughter.
“It was interesting. When the opportunity for me to coach at Wilton came up, I remember asking her (going into freshman season), if she would be ok with me coaching. She didn’t give me a yes-no answer, more of a “Whatever”. I told her that it would give me a chance to see her play more golf because there are several times that Tipton and Wilton dual or are in Invites.
Now, she’ll still ask for my opinions over the weekends or ask me to watch her swing. She has a good ear and receptive to my suggestions or information I will share with her,” said Jamie.
As good as the Tigers have been, the Beavers are right behind. Wilton is sixth in class 2A for 9-hole, top-4 players total average. The Beavers are 10th in 2A in 18-hole average for their top-4 players total and join the Tigers at the district meet in Jesup.
“It is nice to play with people you know. We (Tipton) don’t know the other two teams (Jesup and Sumner-Fredericksburg). It’s been nice that we both had had success. It’s nice that we both will be there, I am friends with a lot of them. I have been going back and forth with their #1 (Alyssa Anderson) and it is nice that she is there too, because it pushes me to play well,” said Kailee.
Meyer has been the medalist or tied for the medalist honors in four Tipton meets this season. She was runner-up medalist at three meets including the River Valley Conference meet. The Tigers have had four different players earn medalist honors this year.
Meyer really shines in invitationals where she drops strokes consistently from the first nine to the second nine. She dropped nine strokes at the Tigerette, 10 from the sectional meet this year and four at the Mid-Prairie Invitational. Both Meyer’s credit maturing as a player for that.
“I always go play by play and hole by hole now. If I have a bad shot I shake it off more and move to the next shot. In past years I didn’t do that well, this year, I think I have improved a lot with that. It’s like, ‘I hit a bad shot, but there is a next one’.
Her dad agrees. He has noticed her improvement in keeping her poise on the course.
“I think that goes back to her maturing as a player from her freshman year to letting things bother her to now as a senior where she lets things go,” said Jamie.
“One of the things I tell her is, and something that I share with my girls at Wilton, is the whole idea of you don’t want to get locked into a score. For example if you get a 10 on the first hole then you, you start pushing and it gets into your head. Instead, if you have a bad shot, you have to move onto the next shot and make the best shot you can from there. You have to keep going from there. It’s a mental approach,” he said.
Kailee will attend Central College in Pella next fall and study secondary math. She is still weighing possibly competing in volleyball or golf for the Dutch.
The state golf tournament is Tuesday, May 30 to Wednesday, May 31 at Jester Park Golf Course in Granger, Iowa.
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