Among the compelling reasons for Ralfe Hickman to enroll at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School were: 1) His next door neighbor was a player on the St. Andrew’s golf team; 2) St. Andrew’s had an affable man of the cloth as its golf coach; 3) girls.
So after a year at the all-boys Landon School in Bethesda and an enjoyable round this summer with Rev. John Thomas, Hickman moved to coed St. Andrew’s in Potomac.
Tuesday at Worthington Manor, Hickman and his new teammates were glad he made the switch as he won the Mid-Atlantic Conference championship and led St. Andrew’s to its first golf title in school history.
Hickman made a clutch 12-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole to finish with a 1-over-par 73, and edge Maret junior Colin St. Maxens by a stroke.
“My goal coming into today was for us to win the team title. In the back of my head, I had a personal goal of winning,” said Hickman. “I have to admit, as we came down to the end, I started adding up my [individual] score.”
With 3-putt bogeys on No. 14 and No. 17, Hickman was watching his goal slip away. His two-stroke lead had evaporated. And when he hit a 2-iron approach to the 482-yard par-five 18th into a greenside bunker, St. Maxens had the edge.
But Hickman responded with the two biggest shots of his round, hitting an awkward 20-yard shot from the sand to within 12 feet, then dropping the curling, downhill putt. Hickman’s putt came after Maxens missed a 20-footer for birdie.
“My putting wasn’t there. I had five three-putt greens,” said Hickman, a 15-year-old who is repeating his freshman year with the move to St. Andrew’s. “But I played well enough tee-to-green to win.”
Hickman, a member at Kenwood, led an improbable turnaround season after St. Andrew’s went 1-7-2 in 2006. This year the Lions (10-0) used a balanced lineup to dominate the MAC.
On Tuesday, that balance was apparent as Hickman’s D.C. neighbor, junior Nathan Richter, shot 81, while sophomore Jeremy Burke (81), senior Lee Miller (82), and freshman Tim Gregg (83) contributed.
“Ralfe, of course, has been a huge plus,” said Thomas, the chaplain at St. Andrew’s, who will move next year to an Episcopal school in Tennessee. “The great thing about our team though, is if you subtract Ralfe’s score from all of our matches, we still would have won them all. Now this one, I’m not so sure.”
