Her team finished fourth. She finished third. Why can’t she stop smiling?
Taylor Brennan didn’t win the individual title at the 7th Region girls’ golf championship. Her team, Bryan Station, didn’t win the team championship.
The Defenders finished fourth, two spots shy of an automatic berth to the Leachman Buick-GMC-Cadillac/KHSAA State Golf Tournament. Brennan finished in a tie for third, which was good enough to make her the first girls’ state qualifier in her school’s history.
She’s excited about the latter, but she couldn’t stop talking about that fourth-place team finish. In her words, “It’s like we’re living in a dream.”
Again, fourth place and no automatic berth to state. But for Bryan Station — which this time last year didn’t field enough players to even qualify for the team championship and has little golf history of which to speak — finishing fourth was game-changing.
GIRLS’ 7TH REGION GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP: CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE RESULTS
“We brought a full team here this time and we did so well, and I’m just so proud of all the girls and our coaches, both of them stuck with us the whole time,” Brennan said. “That’s a really nice feeling to finally have. I love that.”
Brennan, a sophomore, has played with Bryan Station’s No. 2 golfer Morgan Shown, for several years. The Defenders had enough girls practicing last season to field a full team but two couldn’t bring themselves to compete.
“Now we’re all competing,” Brennan said. “I know all of them and they may have just started but they’re doing really, really well. They all like it, so I’m enjoying it.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Bryan Station’s Taylor Brennan sinks a putt for a par-4 on hole No. 5 during the 7th Region girls’ golf championship at Gibson Bay Golf Course. <a href="https://t.co/Ua4UL4YgnX">pic.twitter.com/Ua4UL4YgnX</a></p>— Josh Moore (@HLpreps) <a href="https://twitter.com/HLpreps/status/1044256437688565760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 24, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Dion Sanders, a para-educator at Ashland Elementary School, was hired as the Bryan Station boys’ and girls’ golf coach following the end of the KHSAA’s mandated dead period in July.
“They called me a week after dead period ended and were like, ‘The position’s still open, you want it?’ and I was like, ‘I’ll take it,” Sanders said “Now here we are, fourth place in regionals and Taylor’s going to state. It’s been a good year.”
Sanders, who also works at Kearney Hill Golf Links, where he became obsessed with the game after graduating from Henry Clay High School, said he sees “tremendous potential” with this group. He recalled the first time he met them for a less-than-impressive hitting practice.
“I saw their swings and I said, ‘There’s no reason I can’t have you all shooting in the low hundreds or under 100 by the end of this season,” Sanders said. “I had one girl, Ruby (Sharrard), who went from a 125 last year to shooting a 98 today at regionals. My other two are lower 100s. There’s a lot of potential. I told Taylor, your senior year, we’re taking regionals. That’s the goal. ... We’re gonna be the team to beat in a couple of years.”
Brennan has been a vital part of Station’s transformation. The school didn’t have a golf program when she took up the sport in middle school; now it has a two-time top-10 finisher in one of the state’s toughest regions. The Defenders also for the first time have uniforms with the familiar green and gold “BS” that they can wear proudly on courses of similar color.
“I just wanted to do it for Station, because I love my school so much, so much. I wanted to do it for my school coach and my swing coach (Kelly Williams), cause he’s been there since day one,” Brennan said. “And I’m really happy about the team thing. I can’t stop saying that. ... We literally just figured everything out and to come in and finish fourth in regionals? That just blows all of our minds. We are so happy, and I’m so proud of everyone. ...
“I don’t know how to speak right now cause I just want to go to school and tell the athletic director, ‘We finally did it.’ I think that’ll be a cool feeling.”
Sanders expects cool feelings to keep finding Brennan.
“Taylor’s a special person,” Sanders said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met an individual, male or female, who’s been this passionate about this sport at such a young age. She is somebody that can be doing some big things in golf in the future.”
This story was originally published September 25, 2018 at 5:30 PM.