USC Union welcomes a new sports team this year with the formation of the Bantam Golf team under Coach Gil Moss. With exciting new facilities and technology these skilled players are practicing hard to compete at the club level in Fall 2024. They played their first scrimmage match against USC Sumter on Oct. 3 at Lakeside Country Club. Meet a few of our USC Union Golf players.
Sophomore Will Childers is excited to be playing golf again after competing on the Union County High School team. “I wanted to learn the sport just to play for future reference,” he said. “When I heard about the preparations for a team here, I told Coach Moss I would be his first player.” He says that the technology that the team uses to practice, like their indoor golf simulator, provides a great opportunity to practice in a way that he has never experienced before. “I’m looking forward to trying new courses and playing against new folks,” he said. “I enjoy the competition.
“This game is 90% mental and 10% physical,” said freshman Jaeden Weathers. “So much can go wrong and so little can go right.” A graduate of Laurens High School, where he was the #1 golf player, he says that the furthest his ball has ever traveled is 374 yards, but that having more speed and power makes it harder to be accurate. Between the simulator and his teammates, though, Weathers says he learns a lot. “We’re all friends, but there is definitely a lot of friendly competition,” he said. “We help each other grow.”
Freshman Logan Crawford says he feels confident going into the team’s first matches. “We’ve got some good guys on the team,” he said. “My swing has improved a lot.” Since he began playing on the team at Ware Shoals High School, where he became the #1 player, Crawford says he has “gotten a lot better than he thought he was going to be.”
These players can be found practicing on their new driving course or in their indoor golf simulator at the Laurens location. They are currently using a Garmin, which is placed behind the players when they hit the ball in their indoor simulator. The device connects to an app on the player’s phones, where they can then see their total distance, speed, backspin, deviation and much more. In the coming weeks, the team will begin working with a new simulator box, with which they can virtually play over 200 courses and download playback videos to study later.
“We are in the infant stages,” said Coach Gil Moss. He currently has seven players on his team, two sophomores who played at Union County High School and 5 freshmen, and he says that they played well at their first scrimmage match. “These are good guys. We are having a great time.”
Featured Image: (l – r) Logan Crawford, Will Childers, Ashton Faulkenberry, Coach Gil Moss, Jaeden Weathers, Andrew Gonzalez, and Tanner Belue
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