It’s usually around the middle of November when I start thinking about my annual year-end post.
The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that 2025 was the year of Phoenixville’s Kayley Roberts.
Roberts has always been a good player. She and sister Kate Roberts, two years older than Kayley, had teamed up to power the Phantoms to the PIAA Class AAA team title in 2022 when Kate was a junior and Kayley a freshman.
Kayley Roberts had qualified for the PIAA Class AAA Championship individually in her first three years of scholastic golf, never finishing worse than fourth.
But early in the summer, it was apparent that this was a different Kayley Roberts, a player who had taken it up a notch.
Roberts carded a 1-under 71 at the U.S. Naval Academy Golf Club in Annapolis, Md. in June to punch her ticket to the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship at the Atlanta Athletic Club in St. Johns, Ga. in July.
A couple of weeks later, Roberts captured medalist honors in the Philadelphia Girls Junior PGA Championship at DuPont Country Club’s Nemours Course to earn her a trip to the Girls Junior PGA Championship at Purdue’s Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex in West Lafayette, Ind.
The opening round of the one-day, 36-hole test at DuPont was a real eye-opener as Roberts carded a sparkling 7-under 65 in which she started with birdies at the first and second holes and an eagle at the par-5 third. She would finish five shots clear of probably the most talented gathering of junior golfers in the Philadelphia area.
Roberts would come up just short of earning a spot in the match-play bracket in the U.S. Girls’ Junior in the sweltering Georgia heat, ending up a shot out of a playoff for the final match-play berths.
Roberts survived the 36-hole cut in the Girls Junior PGA Championship at Purdue later in July, but struggled in the third round and was three shots off the cutline to get to play the final round.
At some point during the summer, Kayley’s older sister Kate, who had spent her freshman year in the program at Mountain West Conference power San Jose State, decided to come home and join director of golf operations Patty Post’s program at Delaware.
In September, the sisters teamed up once again to fire a 65 at Bent Creek Country Club in Lititz and earn medalist honors in a Golf Association of Philadelphia-administered qualifier for next spring’s U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship, which will be held at the Daniel Island Club in Charleston, S.C.
At some point during the fall, I heard that Kayley would join Kate at Delaware at the end of next summer.
A couple of Delaware players, former Unionville standout Mary Grace Dunigan and Marissa Malosh, a two-time PIAA Class AAA qualifier at South Fayette, finished a shot behind the Roberts sisters and will also represent the Blue Hens at Daniel Island in early May.
By the time the scholastic postseason arrived, Kayley Roberts was more than ready. She blistered the Turtle Creek Golf Course layout, where most of her development into a top-class player has occurred, with a 7-under 65 to claim medalist honors in the Pioneer Athletic Conference Championship.
A few weeks later, Roberts opened play in the District One Class AAA Championship with a bogey-free 3-under 68 at Raven’s Claw Golf Club, a few miles up Ridge Pike from the Turtle, to take a three-shot lead into the final round back at what has become her home course at Turtle Creek.
A 1-under 71 at Turtle Creek gave Roberts a dominating nine-shot victory. I’ve covered every one of the District One tournaments at the Turtle and there is just too much talent for one girl to dominate like that and, believe me, the talent level has never been higher.
The outcome was such a sure thing that Roberts’ friends at Turtle Creek, Bobbi Waltz, the matriarch of the Waltz family that owns the Turtle, and Sandy Waltz, Bobbi’s daughter who has coached the Roberts sisters at Phoenixville, and other members of Kayley Roberts’ fan club at the Turtle, greeted her with flowers and a roll-out banner proclaiming her the District One champion.
Roberts was unable to nail down the state title she coveted a week later as Elizabeth Forward’s Mya Morgan denied her for a second straight year. Give credit where credit is due, Morgan knew a challenge was coming from Roberts and withstood the challenge at Penn State’s Blue Course.
Still, Roberts’ four-year record in the PIAA Class AAA Championship reads second, fourth, tied for third and second in addition to that state team crown she, Kate Roberts and Mackenzie Thompson had joined forces to get in 2022, the first state title in any sport for Phoenixville.
Conestoga came home from Penn State with gold medals in the PIAA Class AAA team competition, the Central League’s Pioneers finishing four shots clear of Peters Township.
Conestoga had cruised to a whopping 25-shot victory in the District One team competition at Raven’s Claw behind junior Jill Burks, who was the runnerup to Roberts in the individual chase at districts. Burks finished in a tie for 12th place individually in her third straight appearance in the PIAA Class AAA championship.
Cardinal O’Hara sophomore Alaina Carson finished in a tie for 10th place in Class AAA in the state tournament at Penn State, not quite as good as the tie for third she had in a dazzling debut as a freshman a year earlier.
But Carson’s big moment in 2025 came in the summer when she captured the title in the Pennsylvania Junior Girls’ Championship at Lebanon Country Club in heat so brutal that the event was reduced from 54 holes to 36 holes.
Carson closed with a 3-under 69 for a 3-under 141 total that gave her a two-shot victory and also earned her a trip to the U.S. Girls’ Junior at the Atlanta Athletic Club.
Morgan wasn’t the only girl to repeat as a state champion at Penn State in October. Maddie Koshko, a senior at St. Joseph’s Catholic Academy in nearby Boalsburg, captured her second straight PIAA Class AA crown at Penn State’s White Course.
Koshko, the runnerup to Carson in the Pennsylvania Junior Girls at Lebanon, will be staying home and joining the program at Penn State, a nice get for Penn State head coach Kristen Simpson.
By the way, Rhianna Gooneratne, the PIAA Class AAA champion as a junior at Plymouth-Whitemarsh in 2023 and the runnerup to Morgan in 2024, joined Roberts in the field at both the U.S. Girls’ Junior at the Atlanta Athletic Club and in the field Girls Junior PGA Championship at Purdue.
Gooneratne also survived a playoff in a qualifier at Neshanic Valley Golf Course in Branchburg, N.J. to earn a trip to the Bandon Dunes Resort on the Oregon coastline for the U.S. Women’s Amateur in August.
And guess where Gooneratne completed a solid fall campaign of college golf as a freshman this year? That would be Delaware and she will be happy to welcome her old scholastic rival Kayley Roberts to the Blue Hens’ roster next summer.
Another girl who had a big year in 2025 was Hannah Webb, the Woolwich, N.J. resident who captured the title in the girls division in the Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association (DIAA) Championship at the St. Anne’s Golf Links in Middletown, Del. and led Archmere Academy to the state team title, which is a coed competition.
Webb edged Roberts by a shot to earn medalist honors in the qualifier at the U.S. Naval Academy for the U.S. Girls’ Junior and also joined Roberts and Gooneratne in the Girls Junior PGA Championship at Purdue after finishing in second place behind Roberts in the Philadelphia Girls Junior PGA Championship at DuPont.
Delaware plays its scholastic golf in the spring, so Webb, a junior, still has two seasons of high school competition ahead of her.
Speaking of girls golf in the spring, I ventured out to French Creek Golf Club in May and watched Episcopal Academy’s Clarissa Leung cap her scholastic career with a second straight Inter-Ac League individual crown after leading the Churchwomen to their sixth straight team title.
It’s been fascinating to watch the inexorable rise of Aphrodite Deng, a native of Canada whose family relocated to Short Hills, N.J. She seemed to come almost out of nowhere to capture the title in the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia (WGAP) Junior Girls’ Championship by a whopping 14 shots as a 13-year-old in the summer of 2023 at the Moorestown Field Club.
By July of this year, there she was on television capturing the title in the U.S. Girls’ Junior at the Atlantic Athletic Club’s Riverside Course with a 2 and 1 victory over Xingtong Chen of Singapore in the scheduled 36-hole final.
It seems the sky’s the limit for this teen phenom.
With apologies to West Chester Rustin senior Cole Berry, an impressive winner of the District One Class AAA boys crown at Turtle Creek by five shots, but the best boys player in District One in 2025 was Unionville senior Charlie Barrickman.
Barrickman finished strong at the Turtle with a 4-under 68, but couldn’t catch Berry, settling for runnerup honors.
But that 68 led the way for the Ches-Mont League’s Longhorns as they captured the District One Class AAA team title by five shots over Radnor.
A week later, Barrickman, who will join the program at Bucknell in the Patriot League at the end of next summer, had the best finish by a District One player as he ended up in third place, two shots behind repeat champion Carson Kittsley of Fox Chapel, in the PIAA Class AAA individual standings.
A day later, Barrickman unleashed a 5-under 67 at Penn State’s Blue Course to lead Unionville to the PIAA Class AAA team crown, its second state team title, by a shot over Radnor and State College.
Barrickman was a fixture on junior golf leaderboards all summer and he lost in a playoff to Kingsway’s Chris Parrish for the Delaware State Junior Boys title.
Probably Barrickman’s most impressive performance of the summer was his tie for third place in the Philadelphia Open at Bidermann Golf Course against a field filled with the region’s top amateur and professional players.
It all added up to a GAP Junior Player of the Year Award for Barrickman.
Kittsley was really impressive in recording a sizzling 6-under 66 in the second round at Penn State’s Blue Course to blow by the rest of the field and capture his second straight PIAA Class AAA crown with an 8-under 136 total.
Kittsley joined a short list of repeat PIAA champions that includes a couple of guys named Jay Sigel and Arnold Palmer. That’s the kind of list you want to be on if you’re a Pennsylvania scholastic golfer.
Daniel Boone senior Chase Yenser capped a really strong 2025 by finishing in fourth place in Class AAA at the state tournament. He had grabbed the lead with an opening round of 4-under 68 at Penn State’s Blue Course before matching par in the second round with a 72 that left him four shots behind Kittsley.
The highlight of a tremendous summer of golf for Yenser came at the Boys Junior PGA Championship at Purdue’s Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex, where he finished in 19th place with a 7-under 275 total.
Yenser had grabbed the lead following the opening round when he blitzed the Ackerman-Allen Course at the Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex with a sizzling 7-under 64.
While Carson was winning the state Junior girls title at Lebanon, Yenser was capturing the junior boys title at Hershey Country Club’s East Course with a 7-under 135 total that gave him a two-shot victory. He had opened with a sparkling 6-under 65.
The runnerup to Yenser that day at Hershey was Episcopal Academy’s Freddy Hartmann, who would go on to help the Churchmen capture the Inter-Ac League title in a race with Malvern Prep and three-time reigning Inter-Ac champion Haverford School that couldn’t have been much closer.
Hartmann, a junior, was the medalist for the day in the last of the six Inter-Ac invitationals that comprise the regular season at Sunnybrook Golf Club to help Episcopal Academy clinch its first Inter-Ac title since 2016. Hartmann’s performance also left him at the top of the standings in the Inter-Ac’s points race, compiled from each player’s showings throughout the six invitationals.
The next day, Hartmann’s teammate, junior Liam Crowley, defeated Arthur Hampel, yet another EA junior, in a playoff on a blustery, chilly day at The 1912 Club to capture the title in the Bert Linton Invitational for the Inter-Ac’s individual championship. Hartmann finished in a tie for third place, a shot behind his two EA teammates.
All in all, two fairly epic consecutive days in the annals of Episcopal Academy golf.
The following week, Malvern Prep shared the title with Episcopal Academy in the Pennsylvania Independent Schools Athletic Association (PAISAA) Championship at Radley Run Country Club with the Friars’ standout junior, Colby Komancheck, earning medalist honors with a 3-under 69.
Hartmann was the runnerup at Radley Run behind Komancheck, who was one of the players who shared third place with Hartmann in the Bert Linton.
Komancheck had beaten Yenser in a playoff in July to capture medalist honors in the Philadelphia Boys Junior PGA Championship at the RiverCrest Golf Club & Preserve, where his parents, Jamie and Kelly, are the husband-wife team of PGA professionals who run the pro shop.
That earned Komancheck a trip, along with Yenser, to the Boys Junior PGA Championship at Purdue.
Haverford School senior Sean Curran had a disappointing fall, at least compared to the remarkable junior year he put together when he led the Fords to their third straight Inter-Ac title by winning the regular-season points race, captured the Bert Linton crown and won the title in the PAISAA Championship at Radley Run.
But Curran picked up a pretty prestigious victory in the summer when he defeated Haverford School teammate Nicky Nemo in the final of the 111th GAP Junior Boys’ Championship at Merion Golf Club’s West Course. Curran and Nemo are both Merion members.
Nice to see Curran will be staying home and playing golf in the Ivy League and the Big 5 at Penn.
Maybe you thought former Downingtown West standout Nick Gross’ junior days were behind him, but his August birthday left him eligible to compete in the U.S. Junior Amateur and Gross took advantage of the opportunity to reach the quarterfinals in sweltering July heat at Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas, Texas.
In an otherwise disappointing 2025 for Gross, he made a nice run at Trinity Forest before falling to Vietnamese star Nguyen Anh Minh.
Gross was in the lineup in each of Alabama’s starts as a freshman during the wraparound 2024-2025 season and finished in a tie for 30th place in a disappointing eighth-place finish in the weather-plagued Reno Regional at the Montreux Golf & Country Club for the Crimson Tide that ended their season.
Gross was in the lineup for Alabama’s season-opening event in the Folds of Honor Collegiate at the American Dunes Golf Club in Grand Haven, Mich., but was not among the Tide’s first five for the remainder of the fall campaign.
I’ve always thought the 2026 U.S. Amateur at Merion Golf Club’s historic East Course was a long-term goal for Gross, who survived the 36-hole cut in the 2021 Pennsylvania Amateur as a 14-year-old at the East. All of a sudden, 2026 is here.
There was no better amateur golfer in the Philadelphia region in 2025 than Galloway National Golf Club’s Drue Nicholas, who wrapped up an outstanding collegiate career at Drexel in the spring.
Nicholas captured the title in the 125th BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship at Aronimink Golf Club, the Donald Ross gem in Newtown Square that will play host to the PGA Championship in 2026, as Nicholas defeated Huntingdon Valley Country Club’s Patrick Isztwan in the final.
A month later it was Nicholas again, capturing another GAP major, this time the Philadelphia Open at Bidermann in Delaware.
Nicholas was the first player to do the Philly Am-Philly Open double in one summer since the incomparable Jay Sigel did it in 1987. We lost Sigel in April of this year, but his greatness lives on.
Nicholas almost made it a third GAP major when he lost in a playoff to Aronimink’s Hunter Stetson, coming off a solid freshman season at North Carolina State, in the 123rd Joseph H. Patterson Cup at Waynesborough Country Club.
Needless to say, Nicholas was the runaway winner of GAP’s William Hyndman III Player of the Year Award.
Have to give a shoutout to GAP’s Senior Player of the Year, Carlisle Country Club’s Jeff Frazier, who captured a pair of GAP Senior major championships, the Brewer Cup, a match-play event, at LedgeRock Golf Club and the GAP Senior Amateur Championship at Berkshire Country Club.
The win in the GAP Senior Amateur completed the career Grand Slam of GAP majors for seniors for Frazier as he joined the late, great Ray Thompson and Chip Lutz, the Super Senior winner at LedgeRock, a course he had a hand in getting off the ground, as the only players with wins in the Warner Cup, the Chapman Cup, the Brewer Cup and the GAP Senior Amateur.
My obsession with Division I college golf continued in 2025.
Northwestern’s upset of a powerful Stanford team in the NCAA Championship’s Final Match at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, Calif. was a stunning conclusion on the women’s side.
With four players among the top five in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), including Megha Ganne, the Jersey girl from Holmdel who won the U.S. Women’s Amateur last summer at Bandon Dunes, at college golf’s midseason pause, Stanford might be looking for some payback in the spring of 2026.
A week later, Oklahoma State topped Virginia in the NCAA Championship’s Final Match for the guys at La Costa, the Cowboys capturing the 12th national title in the storied history of their program.
Oklahoma State junior Ethan Fang had himself a year in 2025. After helping the Cowboys capture the national title at La Costa, Fang hopped across the pond and became the first American to win the Royal & Ancient’s Amateur Championship at Royal St. George’s Golf Club since Virginia Tech’s Drew Weaver did it in 2007.
That British Am victory undoubtedly had a lot to do with Fang landing on the U.S. Walker Cup team and the Red, White & Blue rallied from a slow start to keep the Cup in U.S. hands with a 17-9 victory over Great Britain & Ireland at the Cypress Point Club, the breathtaking Alister MacKenzie masterpiece on northern California’s Monterey Peninsula.
The Walker Cup will be coming right back in 2026 as the USGA and the R&A have decided to synch up the Walker Cup and the Curtis Cup, the biennial competitions between men’s and women’s amateur teams, respectively, from the U.S. and GB&I, in even years going forward.
The U.S. team will once again be captained by Nathan Smith. Before he was a four-time winner of the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship and played on three U.S. Walker Cup teams, Smith was the PIAA champion as a sophomore at Brookville, northeast of Pittsburgh, in 1994.
Smith will once again lead the U.S. team, this time on GB&I’s home turf at the Lahinch Golf Club in Ireland in early September. The U.S. team might see a passion among the GB&I fan base unlike anything that many of them have never experienced.
The Curtis Cup will return to its mid-June spot on the calendar and the U.S. team, looking to bounce back from a 10.5-9.5 setback at Sunningdale Golf Club in Berkshire, England, will once again be captained by Meghan Stasi.
Before she won the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship four times and played on a winning U.S. Curtis Cup team in 2008, Stasi, then known as Meghan Bolger and playing out of Tavistock Country Club in South Jersey, won the WGAP Match Play Championship seven straight times from 1999 to 2005.
The Curtis Cup will be played at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles and, if the candidates who will audition for a spot on the U.S. team next month at Bel-Air are any indication, there will be some pretty strong Cali girls who should feel right at home for an L.A. Curtis Cup.
Braden Shattuck, the director of instruction at Rolling Green Golf Club, captured the crown in the Philadelphia PGA Professional Championship at Concord Country Club, one of the few titles on the Philadelphia Section PGA circuit that had eluded him.
Shattuck, the runnerup to Nicholas in the Philadelphia Open at Bidermann, earned the Rolex /Haverford Trust Company Player of the Year Award for the fourth straight year.
The victory at Concord also punched Shattuck’s ticket to the PGA Professional Championship next spring at Bandon Dunes. A top-20 finish at Bandon Dunes would give Shattuck a spot on the Colebridge Financial Team, representing club pros across the country in the PGA Championship in May at Aronimink.
As a guy who was a member of the sports staff at the Delaware County Daily Times for 20 years, the last 15 or so of those years covering a lot of golf, it would be a huge kick for me to see a Sun Valley kid playing in the PGA at Aronimink.
Like Shattuck, Joanna Coe, the head of instruction at Merion Golf Club, was the Rolex / Haverford Trust Company Women’s Player of the Year in the Philadelphia Section for the fourth year in a row.
Which leads me right into the shots of the year section of the T Mac Tees Off year in review post.
I mentioned in the post I did wrapping up the Philadelphia Section’s player awards for 2025 that I had recently caddied for Coe in the PGA REACH Philadelphia Pro-Am in October at Stonewall’s Old Course.
For some reason, the women pros played the ladies tees at the Old Course, just 5,357 yards. There was no individual pro prize up for grabs, so Coe played aggressively.
By the time we arrived at the tee on the par-5 first hole -- our 17th hole of the day in the shotgun start -- which measures just 441 yards from the ladies tee, nearly 60 yards less than the blue tees and more than 60 yards up from the tips, Coe had three birdies on her scorecard and two or three other near-misses.
I wasn’t exactly sure where to tell Coe to aim her tee shot. There’s a bunker about 240 yards out and I was pretty sure she could clear that the way she was hitting it and there is a little room to the left of it.
I gave Coe a line that was probably a little on the conservative side, left of the bunker. I just didn’t have much of a frame of reference for somebody who could hit it like Coe does from that tee box. She proceeded to kill a drive that was right of the line I gave her, but I was fairly certain it would carry the cross bunker.
I walked by the bunker. Wasn’t in there. And then I kept walking. I finally located the ball in the middle of the fairway, just 132 yards away from the front-right pin. That would make it a 309-yard drive. It was playing fast and firm, but 309 is 309.
It was the next shot, however, that was one of the shots of the year. Coe sent her approach right at the pin, but in late-day October shadows, it was hard to see where it ended up. It looked like it might be a little short. It wasn’t until we got inside 50 yards from the hole that you could see the ball, like three-and-a-half, four feet right of the hole and below it.
It was really a pretty easy putt and Coe buried it for eagle. And she hit it close on the par-4 second hole and made birdie there. We had started on the par-5 third hole and Coe birdied that, so, as Coe pointed out, on the card she had an eagle, birdie, birdie start.
The other shot of the year came a few weeks earlier in a semifinal match in Stonewall’s season-long Bud Fretz Cup, a better-ball of partners tournament with players stroking off the low handicap. It is a coveted title at Stonewall and the matches are always hard-fought.
I was carrying for the brother-sister pair of Trevor and Kiersten Seufert while Billy Beamer, a frequent fellow looper of mine, had his Fretz Cup regulars, Tim Riddle and Denny Booth.
The match was pretty close when we arrived at the par-3 ninth hole. The 70-something Riddle, a Stonewall OG who still pitches in a Men’s Senior Baseball League affiliate, was playing from the white tees, 165 yards, but probably a little less to a front pin.
If you catch the front-right fringe, especially with a little spin, the ball can take a left and go down the slope. Riddle moaned at what a terrible swing he had made, but the ball caught that front-right slope and started rolling toward the hole.
Kiersten Seufert had the youngest eyes in the group and she said, “I think it went in.”
She was right. Booth whipped out his phone and filmed our approach to the hole and there the ball was at the bottom of the cup. Riddle can play, but it was his first career hole-in-one, even if it did come on what he didn’t consider his best swing.
Even with the ace, Team Seufert took the match to the 18th hole. But, needing a win to extend the match, the Seuferts lost, 2-up, when Booth hit his two best shots of the day and won the hole with a four net three.
Riddle and Booth went on to capture the Fretz Cup title with a great hole-in-one story to go with it.
There’s going to be a lot of big-time golf going on in the Philadelphia area in 2026.
The PGA returns to Aronimink in May for the first time since Gary Player captured the third of his nine career major championships in 1962.
The U.S. Amateur returns to Merion’s East Course for the first time since 2005 in August and the seventh time overall. It will be the 20th time that the USGA has turned to Merion to host one of its championships.
The USGA will also be in the region when the U.S. Junior Amateur is contested at Saucon Valley Country Club in Bethlehem in July. As a follower of junior golf, I can guarantee you these young kids will entertain you.
Not often you can get three championships of that magnitude within an hour of each other.
In the midst of it all, I’ll be hoping to keep up with the Philadelphia Section PGA Junior Tour and the local junior golf scene in the summer leading right up to the scholastic postseason in the fall.
Happy New Year, indeed.
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