Girls golf team opens Chesterton 2026-27 sports calendar with tournament in Plymouth on Tuesday

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

The most encouraging words spoken by a member of the Chesterton girls golf team after a recent practice were uttered by senior Genevieve Driscoll.
“My dad says every time he’s here for men’s league or something Taylor’s out here putting the whole time,” Driscoll said.
She was referencing teammate Taylor Kisic, a junior who never had played an 18-hole round before high school and instantly showed her potential by carding a birdie on the first hole of her first high school tournament.
That came at Pretty Lake in Plymouth, where the Trojans play Tuesday in the Plymouth Invitational, kicking off the 2025-26 Chesterton sports calendar.
Kisic plays out of the No. 2 spot for the Trojans, one spot behind senior Kirstin McCoy and one spot ahead of Driscoll. Senior Liz Dodds is at No. 4 and several candidates are vying for the fifth spot.
Kisic played a sport every season in her first two years of high school, playing basketball and running track, which limited her time on the course in the spring and even the summer. She is now a two-sport athlete, having given up basketball.
Watching her smooth swing, it was only natural to wonder how good she could become if she dedicated more time to her newest sport. Well, we’re about to find out because putting time in was not an issue for Kisic this summer.
“Once school ended I went on a week and a half golf trip to Ireland with my grandpa and we played every day, 10 rounds in 10 days,” Kisic said. “And then when I got back I’ve been to all the golf practices that I can make it to and I played in every NIJGA (Northwest Indiana Golf Association) tournament. I come out to practice two times a day. Usually if we have practice in the morning, I’ll come out with my dad in the evening.”
Clearly, she is hooked on the sport that can do that to competitors and she is serious about getting better, now sharing that trait with McCoy, the only player on the roster who has competed at the state tournament.
McCoy and Kisic both earned All-DAC honors last season.
“I’m hoping to get four on the all-conference team this season,” coach Pat Ward said.
The coach added that he was pleased at the amount of time several of his golfers put into competing and practicing during the offseason.
“They did a nice job of playing tournaments,” Ward said. “They did a good job getting involved. They put in a lot of effort.”
Nothing new on that front for McCoy, whose mother, Jill, is director of instruction at Sand Creek and head girls golf coach at Valparaiso University.
Kristin, 17, recently won her age division at the Indiana Age Group Championships at Swan Lake in Plymouth by shooting an 80 the first day and 73 the second.
Driscoll said her scores in several NIJGA tournaments were all over the board, but in the process she said she feels she developed more consistency, “especially off the tee, hitting fairways finally, and my putting has gotten a lot more consistent.”
As she did a year ago, Dodds spent four weeks at a summer camp, but played more golf before and after that stretch, when she took weekly lessons from Jill McCoy.
“We worked on taking everything slow, keeping my elbow in and just the fundamentals of getting everything down and how it needed to work and run,” Dodds said. “We changed my grip a little. Everything feels a lot smoother and a lot more consistent and it feels a lot better than it has in a while.”
Ward said he will use three different golfers in the No. 5 spot in the season’s first three tournaments: Senior Caroleine Szarzynski on Tuesday, sophomore Taylor House on Wednesday in the Lake Central Invitational at Palmira and freshman Victoria Wojtaszek next Monday in the Kankakee Valley Invitational at Sandy Pines.
“The girls want me to downplay expectations,” the ever optimistic Ward said. “They don’t want the pressure on them, but I’m not going to. I think we can be a podium team at state. I really do.”
Only the top three teams make it to the podium at state. Making the tournament by finishing in the top three at the Sandy Pines regional is a tough challenge in itself. The Chesterton girls have made it to state twice in the past 10 seasons: 2016 and 2022.
Last season, the Trojans finished sixth, 19 strokes behind Penn, the third and final qualifier.
All four Chesterton players whose scores counted are back this season. Their scores at Sandy Pines in the 2025 regional: McCoy 83, Kisic 83, Driscoll 96, Dodds 104.
To beat last season’s qualifying score, those cards must read 78, 78, 91, 99 at the regional. Not easy, but not impossible.