The Saturday drill is familiar for Lincoln Park High School sophomore Zach Baker.
He gets his golf clubs and shoes together and hustles to the bus stop on the corner of Diversey Parkway and California Avenue. Then he patiently sits on CTA bus No. 76 as it lumbers through traffic, finally stopping at Lake Shore Drive. There he transfers to the 151 and takes it north to Irving Park Road.
It’s then a short walk to Baker’s destination, the Sydney R. Marovitz Golf Course on the shores of Lake Michigan.
He doesn’t mind the 45-minute trip. “It’s better than not playing at all,” he said.
Baker goes through the routine not only so he can improve his game, but also to help put an end to the decades-long city schools golf state championship drought. Not since 1930 has a student attending a high school within the city of Chicago won a state golf title.
St. Patrick’s Joe Cermak finds this hard to believe. The senior, who came close to snapping the drought when he finished second as a freshman, thought someone from a city school would have won by now.
“I guess golf is the suburban sport,” Cermak said.
It doesn’t matter whether the high school is public or private. If their school lies within the city’s limits, golfers appear to be facing a no-win proposition in state competition.
Is it just location, location, location? Partly. But simple economics, a lack of accessible public courses and the time spent getting to them have Chicago high school golfers playing from the rough.
“You would’ve thought a magnet school would’ve had a good player, or one of the other public schools,” Cermak said.
It wasn’t always so. When the state held its first high school golf championships in the early part of the 20th Century, the city ruled. The first tournament, held in 1916 at the Champaign Country Club, was won by Walter Barndt of Hyde Park High School.
City golfers won the next three state meets in 1919, 1920 and ’21. When University High’s Herbert Field won in 1930 at the Urbana Country Club, few expected he would be the last Chicagoan to win a state title.
In the subsequent years, Cermak has come close. As a freshman, he finished just a shot behind winner Drew Pierson of Lockport, and last season he finished fifth. He’s still alive in this year’s state playoffs, which culminate Friday and Saturday in Bloomington.
A city girls player never has come close to the title since the tournament began in 1975.
Faced with challenges
St. Ignatius boys coach Ed Monaghan is familiar with the challenges.
“Not only are we in the city,” he said, “but we are in the worst possible location of the city, as far as getting to a course.”
For practice, Monaghan’s players usually drive from the Near West Side campus to Jackson Park, a 15-minute trip, or Harborside, 35 minutes away. Cermak said his team often travels to Lake County for practice. That’s a 45-minute trek.
According to the Tribune’s annual Chicago-area golf guide, there are just 10 public courses in the city limits, compared with 198 in Illinois suburbs.
“There are so many people and not as many courses,” Baker said. “We have fewer meets, there’s less time to practice and you can’t get on these public park district courses when you want.”
Economics is another major factor. Gary Groh concedes he’s fortunate to be the girls golf coach at New Trier in Winnetka, where parents generally can afford private golf lessons.
And wealthier students often have parents who are members of private clubs where they can practice. That’s where some of the top high school golfers in the state, such as Libertyville’s Michael Schachner, have honed their games.
“It’s tough for kids who don’t have a home course to grow up on,” said St. Ignatius’ Ian Springer, whose parents have been country club members. “You can go out and play as many holes as you want. But if you have to play on the public courses, it’s crowded, you feel rushed and it’s hard to focus.”
Northside Prep junior Nelson Mandrell advanced to the state tournament as a freshman in 2001, the last time Public League golfers got an automatic berth in the finals. He failed to make it back this season.
“I think it comes down to golf being a really privileged sport,” said Mandrell, who has been helped by spending time playing in South Carolina during vacations with his uncle and grandfather. “The opportunities in the city just aren’t what they are in the suburbs.”
Lincoln Park’s Baker almost didn’t have a high school team to join this season. That’s not unusual in the Public League, which entered only 12 boys and four girls teams in state competition.
Baker and his mother pushed to get a coach and have the school organize a team. The new coach, history teacher Mark Rasar, didn’t have much money to work with. He started last year with a budget of $123, leftover profits from the previous year’s candy sales.
“I used that money,” said Rasar, who remembers paying $125 to golf for an entire summer while growing up in Peoria. “We played one practice round and went to a driving range.”
Things are better this season. A golf outing in the summer raised $1,500 for the program.
Suburban teams often show up for matches with matching shirts and golf bags inscribed with the school name. Rasar got his cousin, car dealer Don Cranley, to donate shirts, but there was no money to get them embroidered. That will have to wait until 2004.
Suburban schools play several dual matches and invitationals a season. But the typical Public League school schedule this season included only four matches, the city tournament and the state series. Economics, Greenfield notes, plays a part in this. A mini-bus is needed to take players to each meet, at $99 a pop. “A principal holding the purse strings wonders where this money is coming from,” he said.
Who’ll step up?
Which golfer might break the city losing streak? It could be Cermak, who was tied at 76 with eventual champion Brandon Lawson of Marmion after the first round last season but faded to a fifth-place tie.
Cermak and brother Matt, a sophomore, both qualified for state during the St. Ignatius Class AA sectional on Tuesday. Matt Cermak took medalist honors with a 72.
Brother Rice’s Tim Harrigan and Springer also made it through to state play.
“We’ll have an individual champ,” Cermak said of Chicago’s chances. “Hopefully, it’ll be a Cermak.”
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History of winners
The 72-year absence of an individual or team champion in golf is unmatched by any other high school sport in the state. There have been no state champs from the city in boys or girls bowling, girls cross country, girls golf, girls soccer or softball. But those sports are relatively new. Here is a list of all sports showing the last state champion from a school in Chicago.
SPORT (Year of first state series): City’s last champion, including athlete, school, division and event, if applicable, YEAR
Badminton (1977): Sandy Colby, Lourdes, 1980
Baseball (1940): Marist (AA), 1978
Boys basketball (1908): Westinghouse (AA), 2002
Girls basketball (1977): Hope (A), 2003
Boys bowling (2003): None
Girls bowling (1973): None
Boys cross country (1946): Peter Muller, University High, 1996
Girls cross country (1979): None
Football (1973): Mt. Carmel, 2002
Boys golf (1916): Herbert Field, University High, 1930
Girls golf (1975): None
Boys gymnastics (1952): Dave Johnson, St. Rita, floor exercise (tied) and still rings, 1996
Girls gymnastics (1977): Sheryl Kurowski, Resurrection, all-around, 1990
Boys soccer (1972) Harrison, 1973
Girls soccer (1988): None
Softball (1976): None
Boys swimming (1932): Chris Ulrich, Brother Rice, 100-yd butterfly, 1987
Girls swimming (1975): Katherine Paglini, Latin, 100-yd backstroke, 2001
Boys tennis (1912): Walker Grimes and Spencer Vegosen, Francis Parker, doubles, 2003
Girls tennis (1972): Anete Bandere and Suzanna Gracianin, Lane Tech, doubles, 2002
Boys track (1893): Leo (Class A team), Rondell Williams, Phillips, Class A 100, 2003; and 200 meters, Mario Bullock, Leo, Class A 300 intermediate hurdles, 2003
Girls track (1973): Alexandria Anderson, Morgan Park, Class AA 100 and 200 meters, 2003
Boys volleyball (1992): Marist, 2002
Girls volleyball (1975): Mother McAuley, 2000
Boys water polo (2002): Brother Rice, 2003
Girls water polo (2002): Mother McAuley, 2003
Wrestling (1937): St. Rita (team title); Charles Lloyd, Mt. Carmel,
130 pounds; Bryan Harney, Mt. Carmel, 160 pounds, 2003
Note: Team competition began in 1936 for boys tennis and 1938 for boys golf.
