PERRYSBURG – Second place in the Northern Lakes league has become painfully frustrating for Perrysburg’s
girls golf team.
The Yellow Jackets have one of the NLL’s best programs, but they’ve never won the league championship.

But Perrysburg believes its championship drought could end this season.
The Yellow Jackets return five letter winners from last season when they finished second in the NLL
overall and in the league tournament. Perrysburg was 5-1 in NLL duals last season, losing only to
Southview which swept the overall and league titles.
The overall champion is decided by points awarded for dual-match wins and in the tournament.
Among the returnees are four players who were all-league last season – first-team pick Lauren Diehl,
second-team selections Jenny Lee and Becca Tudor, and honorable mention choice Monica Dorner. And Liz
Andrus, who also returns, just missed honorable mention by half a point. The all-league teams are based
on points earned in dual matches and the league tournament.
Even though the Yellow Jackets graduated first-team all-league honoree Kendall Tudor, the Yellow Jackets
remain loaded with the talent, depth and experience to end their streak of four straight runnerup
finishes in the NLL.
The NLL girls tournament started in 2006. Perrysburg finished third that year, and has been second every
year since. The Yellow Jackets were runnersup to Northview by two strokes in 2008.
"Winning the league has been our goal ever since the end of last season," Diehl said.
"We’d love to win the league. It would be a major accomplishment that we’ve all worked hard for.
We’re working hard to be the best that we can be."
The Yellow Jackets started preparing for the season by playing indoors last winter at South Toledo and
lifting weights at school. And this summer, the team has played a full schedule of tournaments,
including those in the Toledo Junior Golf Association.
"Southview and Northview have played great golf. It’s not like we’ve played poorly at the league
tournament, but we just haven’t won," said Perrysburg coach Rick Rettig, who is in his eighth
season. "If we take care of our own business, we feel like we hold our destiny in our hands. It’s
up to us to perform. It’s not for anyone else to fall apart.
"They know we don’t have any (NLL championship) banners in our gym and then they see the banners at
Southview and Northview because a lot of our players also play baseball. They get upset by that. They
want to get over hump. If we’re patient with our games and if we’re patient with ourselves, and treat
the NLL tournament as any other tournament, we’ll achieve that. We just have to play within
ourselves."
Although the Yellow Jackets’ first goal is to win the league and their second objective is to qualify for
the Division I state tournament for the first time, they’re not consumed by those goals.
Instead, they’ve adopted an approach that allows them to set smaller goals along the way. They’ve
striving to play well in every match, and they’re setting individual goals for each match like no
three-putt greens, hitting two-thirds of the greens in regulation or hitting the fairway consistently.
The individual match goals ensure that every shot counts, Rettig said.
"Our main goal is to keep our focus and not to think too much, not be underconfident or
overconfident," Lee said. "We just want to go out and play, worrying about the next
shot."
"Our goal is to take baby steps and not worry about the big picture in the end," Becca Tudor
said. "You have to take baby steps to reach your goal. Our goal right now is to win our first
match, and then to win our second match and keep building on that instead of saying our goal is to worry
about what’s going to happen six weeks from now and say we’re going to win the league."
The team’s top four players – Diehl, Tudor, Lee and Dorner – already are shooting scores under 80.
Andrus, the team’s fifth player, was on pace for an 85 during a recent practice round that was cut short
by rain
Kendra Wolf and Kelsea Newman are vying for the sixth spot.
Diehl, Lee, Tudor, Andrus and Newman are seniors, while Wolf is a junior and Dorner is a sophomore.
Diehl, Lee and Tudor are the team’s captains.
Tudor, Diehl, Lee and Andrus all are in their fourth season of varsity play.
And with seven good players, Perrysburg has the depth and talent needed to overcome a bad day by one of
its players.
"To have four scores under 80 is really solid," Rettig said. "We’re definitely a better
team than last season, no question about it."
"The experience helps us a lot,’ Diehl said. "We’re all familiar with what’s going on and we
help each other out, and we help the younger players get adjusted to playing at this level. It just
makes you a lot more comfortable and a lot more confident, knowing what to expect."