Meet the amazing team that ended Salem’s 20-year golf drought

Every decade or two, a high school sports journey emerges that is so refreshingly cool, it sends chills down your spine.

This decade’s feel-good, out-of-the-blue story is being written by the Salem girls golf team, which has earned the school’s first team appearance in the MHSAA Division 1 state meet since 2005 — at least two years before any of the current Rock golfers were born.

Playing the entire day in “The Perfect Storm”-caliber weather conditions (drenching rain and gusting wind), Salem out-dueled long-time nemesis Plymouth to finish third at last week’s Division 1, Regional 3 tournament hosted by Northville Township’s Salem Hills Golf Course.

The top three teams in each regional — just 18 overall — advanced to this week’s state meet (Oct. 17 and 18) at The Meadows Golf Course on the campus of Grand Valley State University.

Dramatic ending

As expected, perennial powers Northville and Brighton finished a dominating 1-2, with respective team scores of 302 and 337.

But the Rocks’ fate was in peril until the final nerve-wracking holes, when their group of easy-to-cheer-for players used a high level of mental toughness to outlast the Wildcats and Mother Nature.

“Brooke (Resovsky) was our first player to finish and when she walked off the 18th green, she was scrolling down on her phone — refreshing, refreshing, refreshing — getting the latest live-scoring updates,” recounted Salem Head Coach Hope Warkoczeski.

“When the other girls were walking off the course after finishing their rounds a short time later, they saw Brooke and I, and wondered why we were so excited. When we told them we were going to states, well, there was a lot of joy, screaming and even some crying.

“My mom (Kelly) was serving as our assistant coach at the regional, so it was a super-emotional moment for me and the players.”

As it should be.

Both young and seasoned players contribute

After all, the Rocks’ top five players include only two seniors (one of which had a personal-best score of 111 for 18 holes just one year earlier), two sophomores and a freshman — none of whom grew up learning to play at lavish country clubs, like several of their competitors.

Salem pulled it all together under the cool-and-calm guidance of Warkoczeski, the program’s fifth-year coach who was named Regional Coach of the Year following last week’s long-awaited “State”-ment.

While all five players’ efforts were vital, it was 10th-grader Resovsky who led the way with a sterling round of five-over 77 — just five years after she picked up a golf club for the first time as a fifth-grader.

Resovsky’s first serious introduction to golf came at Canton’s High Velocity Sports, a sprawling facility known mainly for indoor soccer, not golf.

“My first lessons came on the golf simulator that is set up just inside High Velocity’s front doors,” Resovsky noted.

Fantastic focus

Wasn’t she distracted by the waves of people streaming through the HVS doors as she received instruction?

“If I was older, it may have been a little intimidating with all the people walking by watching me and my instructor,” Resovsky said. “But I was only in fifth grade, so it didn’t really bother me.”

Senior Amelia Olson — the player who didn’t break 110 as a junior — carded a stellar round of 86, thanks largely to an off-season of relentless work on the driving range.

“Just about every day in the months leading up to this season, Amelia would work her shift at Fox Hills (where Warkoczeski is the golf operations manager), then head straight to the range,” Warkoczeski raved.

“She would work her tail off at work, then go work her tail off on the range. That’s how she was able to knock so many strokes off her score. She worked tirelessly on her swing and it’s paid off.”

Seeing senior make state meet ‘amazing’

The second senior in the Rocks’ top five is MacKenzie MacKinder, who Warkoczeski blanketed with praise.

“MacKenzie has been with me for four years, so to see her get to play in the state meet is special,” the coach said. “MacKenzie has been putting in the grind for four years, so to see her hard work come to fruition is amazing.”

The Rocks’ ascension would not have been possible without the strong contributions of underclassmen Claudia Fisher, a sophomore, and freshman Allison Mayer — both of whom Warkoczeski lauded for their clutch play under pressure.

Warkoczeski, who was an individual state finalist as a senior at Salem in 2016, said there were early signs this season could be historical for the Rocks.

Big turnout encouraging

“At the beginning of the season I was excited because this is the largest team we’ve had  in my years as coach here,” she said. “I knew we had potential because every match we played early in the season, our scores would get lower.

“Last month, we played a tri-match with Canton and Northville. Northville posted some crazy-low numbers, but we weren’t that far away from them. I figured if every one of our girls could slice five shots off their scores before the end of the season, we had a chance (of qualifying for the state meet).

“Then we played at Brighton’s Oak Pointe Country Club, which is not an easy course at all to play. But we were right there with them most of the day, which I never would have imagined a few months earlier. That’s when, again, I thought, ‘This could be our year’.”

Mother Nature added the final obstacle to the Rocks’ inspiring run when she delivered the kind of nasty weather golfers despise.

“The day before the regional, I saw the weather report for Tuesday and it didn’t look good,” Warkoczeski recalled. “I sat the girls down and I told them: ‘It’s going to rain all day, your hands are going to be wet and cold, your clubs are going to be wet, but you just have to focus and play through it’. I was so proud of how their mental toughness overcame the conditions.”

The rest is gravy

What type of goals has Warkoczeski set for her team at the state meet?

“First of all, I told them, ‘Hey, this is bonus golf’; not a lot of people expected us to get past the regional,” she said. “We’re probably in the middle of the pack going into the state meet, but if everybody plays the best rounds of their lives, who knows what could happen.”

Ed Wright can be reached at 734-664-4657 or edwright@socialhousenews.com.