Park’s Solid Play Jump-Starts Villa Park

Girls’ high school golf has blossomed from a leisurely social activity into a legitimate, competitive sport.

Right in the middle of that movement has been Priscilla Park, a Villa Park High sophomore.

Park transferred from Foothill High during the summer when her family moved, joining Shelly Raworth at Villa Park to form the top twosome in Orange County.

Her presence made the Spartans an instant county power.

It grabbed the attention of players from top-ranked University. Suddenly, the highly touted Trojans had a rival. They practiced harder and focused a little more on each shot.

Other teams saw a Spartan team that didn’t make the playoffs one year become a section title contender the next, and worked to do the same.

So, for the impact she has made on the sport as much as for the high level at which she plays it, Park is The Times’ Orange County girl golfer of the year.

“This year was a much better year in girls’ golf,” Park said. “There was a lot more competition and there was a lot of improvement. It helps in the long run because the better the competition, the more you’re forced to improve yourself.”

Park, with a smooth swing and a perpetually jovial attitude, posted an average nine-hole score of 40.4 during the regular season and was medalist in 10 of 18 matches. When the postseason came around, her game really took off.

“During the season she wasn’t hitting the ball well,” said Raworth, who regularly played in the same group as Park. “I knew she was a better player than that and all of a sudden she started hitting it real well and I knew her scores would drop.”

Park averaged 76.7 (18 holes) in the postseason, including a 10-shot win in the Century League final.

She shot 76 in the Southern Regional tournament Nov. 9 on the difficult par-74 South course at Los Serranos and was medalist in a regional for the second consecutive year.

But her impact was felt most at the Southern Section team finals when she shot a one-under-par 71, a county best and 18-hole school record, to lead the Spartans to a third-place finish.

It was the first sub-par postseason round turned in by an Orange County golfer in a team competition, and it helped Villa Park become the first county team to finish ahead of University in any match.

The next day, she shot 77 and tied for 10th in the Southern Section individual finals. She then shot 79 in the season-ending CIF-WSCGA finals.

“It’s real good for the sport having her honored this way,” Villa Park Coach Gordon Sutorius said. “And she deserves it. She came here and all of a sudden we had a great program. We were able to participate in a level of play we didn’t have last year.”

Raworth, who at the beginning of last season worried about the quality of girls’ team golf, said Park’s presence helped change her mind.

“She made me play better and also made me focus on the team more,” Raworth said. “Last year, I kind of just focused on what I was doing.”

Park, who was also honored as the team’s scholar athlete with a 4.6 grade-point average, said she couldn’t be happier with the player of the year honor.

“It’s really important to me,” she said. “I really put in a lot of effort and I accomplished a lot of my goals. I’m pretty satisfied with my year.”