They may still be young, but the members of the Aberdeen Roncalli girls’ golf team are accomplished and hungry for more success this spring.

The Cavaliers, who won the Northeast Conference and Region 1A championships last season, fell short of their expectations at the State A tourney. They feel like they have unfinished business this season after taking eighth at state and just missing out for a spot on the podium.

“The girls are excited. They had that little taste of victory with the conference and with the regions and then they got left with a little bitter taste in their mouth at state, where we didn’t quite get a plaque,” said Roncalli coach Jon Murdy. “We were close, but the bad taste is what they’ve got in their mouth right now.”

The Cavaliers feature five sophomores as their top players. Murdy understands that expectations will be lofty after what the freshmen accomplished last season. However, he also does not want to put added pressure on the girls.

“I’ve been working with a couple of them throughout the winter. All of them want to get better,” Murdy said. “It’s going to be interesting to see how well the season can go. You start putting expectations on wanting to do better, things can go south, and so it’s kind of keep things simple for them, make sure that they understand, if they keep doing the little things right, the big picture will work.”

Roncalli will be led by Claire Crawford, who led the state tournament following the opening round last year and eventually placed sixth at the event.

“She’s kind of the rock on the team,” Murdy said. “Even when she doesn’t play to her potential or what she would like, it’s still a really good score.”

Murdy noted that Crawford has a demeanor that is suited for golf, never getting too high or too low regardless of how she is playing.

“I don’t think I’ve seen her have a bad day, no matter what’s going on on the golf course,” Murdy said.

The other sophomores on the squad are Morgan Helms, Ava Danielson, Reese Heinrich, and Grace Seyer.

Murdy said each of the players are motivated to improve.

“All of them, great kids first, and then they want to compete,” Murdy said. “It’s going to be fun to see the improvement from how the season started to finish last year, to what we start with the beginning of the season this year to how we can finish, because all of them want to get better.”

Murdy said there are also a couple of other younger girls who will push for varsity playing time.

While there are no juniors or seniors on the team, Murdy said that there is a system in place where players help each other.

“The one thing that I love that Roncalli does as very good job with, and then we just keep it going with the golf, is it doesn’t matter if you’re a senior to a seventh-grader, when you’re playing that sport or doing this activity, you’re helping each other,” Murdy said. “It doesn’t matter what you are. The older kids are mentors to the younger kids and the younger kids look up to the older kids.”

Because of the mild winter, the Cavaliers are well ahead of pace compared to last season, when they didn’t have a single event until early May.

“I know last year, our first outside golf was a tournament. We went down to Dakota Valley,” Murdy said.

He recalled that there was a bit of anxiety among the players because of the lack of quality practice time before hand.

“And I just told the girls, I don’t care what you shoot,” Murdy said. “Go out there, swing a club, try to hit it as best you can every single time, see what happens.”

Not only was there a lack of solid prep time for the season, but last year’s conditions forced a condensed schedule, which meant little room for practice once action got underway. That will not be the case this spring.

“Instead of trying to jam-pack everything into four and a half weeks, we’ve got a better time period to try to get the girls ready to play on a course and at the same time, we have time after a tournament to work on things,” Murdy said. “That was kind of the big thing last year was, we were trying to fix things on the fly.”

Murdy, who also coaches the Roncalli boys’ team in the fall, said that girls tend to put more pressure on themselves and think about improvement non-stop.

“I don’t have to put that pressure on them, they do it enough to themselves,” Murdy said, “so to me it’s how do I get them to relax the most to get the best out of them?”

For that reason, Murdy doesn’t try to push the expectations too much.

“I still use that line, I don’t care if you shoot 72 or 122, if you tried on every single one of your shots, that’s all I can ask for,” Murdy said.

Still, the pieces are in place for the Cavaliers to have a memorable season.

Murdy said a key will just be focusing on the task at hand, because he’s seen players on other teams get caught up in a bad shot where it can turn into another bad shot.

“If they literally just try to put that bad shot behind them, alright, I got this shot, where am I going, how am I hitting it, what club am I hitting, go through all their steps,” Murdy said, “good things will usually come out of that more than not.”