The First Academy Royals are pretty perfect on the links. The girl’s golf team is undefeated on the season, beating the competition by several strokes a match including a 16-stroke victory in regionals.
“We have a perfect record, so you can’t beat that,” said senior Morgan Baxendale, who shot a 2 under at regionals for first place individually.
Five talented golfers make up the TFA squad including Baxendale, Ariel Siqin Yu, Emma Zhao and sisters Kelsey and Taylor Zeng. Kelsey Zeng actually won last year’s 1A Individual State Championship, competing alone at states.
But this year, she has enjoyed not only competing with this talented team, but her freshman sister as well.
“To have Taylor here too is really fun, it’s a really good bonding experience for both of us,” said Kelsey.
Playing side by side isn’t new. Kelsey and Taylor have spent their free time teeing off for years, sandwiched between their older sister Courtney who now plays for Vanderbilt and their younger sister Ava who is in just 6th grade, and already showing precision on the course. All in all, it’s a golfing family.
“A friend took us to the golf course one day and we started hitting balls and we got really into it,” said Taylor.
Years spent on the golf course with the sisters playing alongside one another is paying off as the Royals have a chance next week to finish off the season with a state title.
“It would be the dream that we’ve had this year. For sure,” said TFA Golf Coach Chris Bateman. “We’ve been working towards that, and we felt like with the talent that we had this year, we certainly had the opportunity to do that.”
For the Zeng sisters it’d be a championship in their final year of playing together. It doesn’t get any better than that.