Girls golf and Alfred Poe
Erica Clinard of Reynolds sat under a shade tree Wednesday afternoon at Pinebrook Country Club, nursing what she said was a bad headache. Behind her, and 50 yards to her right, girls from high schools in the Central Piedmont 4-A Conference practiced on the putting green or were tuning their swings on the range while warming up for the conference tournament.
Not sure if Clinard ever kicked the headache, but as it turned out, the malady didn’t keep her from winning the championship because she fired a 36, beating Reagan freshman Hannah Craver by two shots and junior Kristi Ingram of Mount Tabor — normally the CPC’s top golfer — by three.
Girls golf in Forsyth County, which got its meager beginnings when Dennis Ring started a team at Mount Tabor in the 1990’s, has never been better. There are at least five players from schools in the CPC who could be factors when the regionals are held next week. Are these players ready to tackle the big-time players around the state? They will know in the next couple of weeks.
I am working on a story highlighting some of these players that’s scheduled to run next week.
I was at Carver this morning to interview the well-rounded football player Michael Lawrence. As Michael and I left the office, I saw the familiar face of Alfred Poe.
Poe, who retired in June as a teacher and athletics director at Carver, was stopping by the school to drop something off for his daughter. I walked outside with him and talked basketball — Poe was the longtime boys coach at Carver, and spent his last 10 or so years as either the head coach or assistant coach with the varsity girls team, which won two state championships in that span.
I asked Poe what he was doing, and he said he was getting ready for basketball. That surprised me. To make a long story short, Poe took my cell phone number and said he was going to decide today where he would be this year, presumably as a coach. He said I would be surprised by the where.
I’m sure I will be. I was surprised enough to hear that he hadn’t yet gotten basketball out of his system.