During the 2025-2026 school year, the Riverside Brookfield High School girls golf team left their mark by winning the conference competition at St. Andrew’s Golf and Country Club in West Chicago.
Four of the eight participants from RBHS placed in the top eight, including senior Lucia Vazzana placing third and sophomore Harper Jesswein placing fourth.
“I’ve been playing golf for fun since I was probably 10 years old,” Jesswein said. “ I started competitively when I started out at RB, freshman year being my first year.”
Like any other sport, golf is both fun and challenging for its participants. As the girls golf team made their way to conference, some challenges transpired.
“My stress will determine how I play,” Jesswein said. “If I go into it with stress, I’m going to play badly. I just have to control my emotions, and that’s probably one of the most challenging things about golf in general is my mentality.”
Some of the girls even have a history of golf or a way they got into the sport. An important part of childhood is participating in a sport or activity that you want to do throughout high school.
“l’ve been playing golf since I was five,” Vazzana said. “My dad introduced me to it, my older brothers had played it, and then my parents put me in.”
This is Vazzana’s last year playing at RBHS. Throughout her golf career, she has gone through the highs and lows of golf. For the future of RBHS girls golf, she wants the girls to continue to try their best.
“I hope that it grows and stays as something that girls can do and learn from, especially since it’s such a male-dominated field,” Vazzana said. “There are a lot of girls that find it useful to learn.”
Before they played the conference tournament, the team was focused on getting ready. They had practices to train their physical skills, but one thing that head coach and math teacher Doug Schultz likes them to focus on is mentality.
“The mentality of the sport, what we focus on, is being calm and not getting too anxious about your score and focusing on your stroke,” Schultz said. “The girls that are competing at a high level don’t get better at golf just during the six weeks that we have in front of them. It’s a very short season. You get better by practicing and playing outside of the season, so we really worked on the mental part of the game with them.”
As the girls faced their challenges at the conference tournament, focusing on their mentality and their general performance, they were able to take the win and move on to sectionals.
“I’m proud of our team advancing to sectionals,” Vazzana said. “It’s the first time in RB history that we’ve done that. Every year, we’ve had at least one or two good scorers graduate and leave the team. We’ve had to reassess for the next year. I was really proud of my teammates and myself for being able to lose one of our top scorers, to be able to come together, and to be able to make history.”
