Girls golfers take home DAL title

By GERARDO RECINOS
Martinez Tribune

There’s a group of six girls at Alhambra who are breaking new ground for the school, and what’s even better is that they beat College Park to do it.

Sydney Cave, Julia Quontomatteo, Maddie George, Jordan Davis, Claire Jensen and Julia Lloren are all members of the girls golf team that won the school’s first league title when they won the Diablo Athletic League Valley Conference.

“We thought we would be pretty good,” said their coach, Dan Bilanow, a physical education teacher and golf coach who has worked with some of the girls since they were in sixth grade.

Qualifying for the North Coast Section Golf Championship at Chardonnay Golf Club in Napa on Oct. 31 is only the first step. The girls hope to make waves at the event, but coach Bilanow says he has faith in the team.

“Everybody came together and said ‘we have a chance, we can win this,’” Bilanow said. “We really started putting it together two weeks before the tournament.”

Alhambra’s team will be competing in Division I, as the school’s population of 1230 puts them 29 students over the threshold. That means they’ll compete with some of the top golfers in Northern California.

But they have one of their own on the team who can stir things up at the team tournament and possibly earn a berth past NCS.

Jordan Davis is a junior, but she’s been with the team since her freshman year. Bilanow believes that on her day, she can make a push for state.

“If Jordan has the round of her life, she can place as an individual,” Bilanow said of his captain. “She’s the type of kid that will have practice and go home, have dinner, and go back and hit another few bucket of balls after.”

With another week left to go, and then another year after that, Bilanow believes Davis will make a mark on Alhambra before she graduates. And on top of that, he believes they team can repeat the effort they put together.

“It’ll be great, and we know College Park will be gunning for us,” the coach said.