Boner, Deeg Lead Stillwater Area High School Golf Squad

A junior high English class.

That’s the unlikely place that a  friendship, golf partnership and even a bit of a rivalry began for Stillwater Area High School golfers Hailey Boner and Cassie Deeg. Five years later, Boner and Deeg are hoping their relationship and their combined golf acumen can pay off in the form of a state championship for the Ponies.

But let’s go back to the beginning.

“Funny story, actually,” Boner said, when describing the duo’s first meeting.

They were sitting next to one another in seventh-grade English. The assignment was a collage and each girl—unbeknownst to the other—had included a golf glove on their respective projects.

“I looked over and it was like, ‘Oh, you play golf,’” Deeg said. “We both said we wanted to play on the Stillwater High School team and we’ve been on the team together ever since. We play together in the summers and everything.”

The two played very well together at the end of the 2010 season. As sophomores, Deeg and Boner led Stillwater to a third-place finish at the Minnesota Class AAA State Tournament. Deeg finished seventh, with Boner just one stroke behind in eighth place overall. Last year’s finish has fueled the girls’ desire to improve and lead the Ponies to a state title.

“We lost some players who helped us out (last year),” Boner said. “But I think it’s definitely in us to do it. We’ve got some young players who are really pulling through. We just need to push ourselves a little harder and practice a little harder to get to that goal of winning state like we want to. We’ve got a lot of golf left to play.”

Deeg began playing golf—begrudgingly—when her older brother left for college, leaving her father without a partner.

“He was like ‘You’re going to be my new golfing buddy,’ ” Deeg recalled. “And I was like, ‘No. There’s no way I’m going to play golf.’ So during spring break of my sixth-grade year, he signed me up for a lesson. I was like ‘OK, I’ll go. But I’m not going to like it.’ I went and I practiced and did the drills. Now, it’s all kind of a blur, I guess. I just kept going back and I got into it.”

Boner was also drawn into the sport by her father. But it didn’t take as much of a sales job for her.

“My Dad just kind of brought me out and said ‘Let’s see if you can do it’ for fun,” Boner said. “I started with the plastic clubs. From there, I just started buckling down a bit. I got my first swing coach and started doing a lot more practicing. I got serious about it around seventh grade.”

Both of them have learned a real respect for the game, as well. They both also appreciate the social aspect of golf, along with the competition.

“It teaches you courtesy and manners,” Deeg said. “You get to be with people for four or five hours. It’s a really social game. I used to be very quiet and I didn’t talk at all. Golf really brought me out of it.”

“It’s the relationships you make,” Boner said. “The game teaches you so much as a person. You mature a lot faster. It’s competitive, but it’s a friendly competitive. In the summer, we have these friends who go to different schools. We see them at high school events. Because we play with them in the summer and it becomes this awesome relationship. We hang out with them outside of golf and it’s a really cool thing to be a part of.”

As for the Stillwater squad, both Boner and Deeg said the team started a little slowly and may have been a little overconfident early in the season. But the team is starting to swing the clubs well. 

“Coming into it, we knew we were going to be a good team this year,” Deeg said. “The weather hasn’t been all that great. We were a little rusty coming into it. But (Thursday) we won by 15 strokes and we have a lot of golf ahead of us. I’m pretty excited.”

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