Peters Township golf family rallies around Kuhn
The Peters Township boys’ and girls’ golf teams are a close-knit clan. They practice together. They succeed together. They suffer together.
“The whole program is pretty close. We are a golf family,” said girls’ head coach Brian Farrell. “We all look out for each other.”
During the WPIAL championships, all the Indians looked out for David Kuhn. The boys’ head coach has battled through a tough stretch that caused him to miss much of the season.
Kuhn watched his golfers cover the Gold Course at Cedarbrook Country Club wearing protective large black Titleist mittens. His right hand was bandaged because of a band saw accident in late September. After slicing off two fingers in the mishap in his workshop at home, Kuhn wrapped the appendages in a towel and drove himself to Canonsburg Hospital. Airlifted to Allegheny General Hospital, surgeons reattached the fingers to his right hand. Kuhn suffered a setback when he developed bleeding ulcers in his stomach due to medication he was taking during his recovery.
Equally significant was the death of Kuhn’s father, Edward M. Kuhn Sr. of Mount Pleasant, who died Sept. 11. A few months before that, Coach Kuhn was involved in an automobile accident that totaled his car.
Unsuccessful at holding in his emotion after his golfers secured the school’s fifth WPIAL trophy, fourth under his reign, Kuhn said of the significance of the championship, “This was the first one my dad missed, but I know he was here looking down on us.”
His golfers, meanwhile, looked after him.
“We were extremely motivated [because of] Coach Kuhn,” said Ben Morgret, who finished with a 76.
“We are a tight team and family. We spend a lot of time together. So we were excited to bring home one for him. [This championship] feels good,” he added.
Jake Sollon agreed. He has known Kuhn virtually all his life. He says when athletic director Brian Geyer told the team of Kuhn’s misfortune, he was taken aback. “It was hard at first, but we kept moving forward.”
According to Sollon, that’s a philosophy the golfers learned from Kuhn.
“If you hit a bad shot, stay calm. Keep your composure. Keep going from there. If you hit a shot and it’s not good, focus on the next one. It’s the same with life,” he said. “You are going to have ups and downs, good times and bad times. Keep moving forward.”
Morgret added that there is more to life than golf. “Golf’s just a game. There are worse things than hitting a bad golf shot. Worse things can happen in life.”
But good things happen to those who maintain focus and persevere.
“They have done what we asked all year,” said Kuhn of an Indians’ team that has three juniors, Sollon, Alec Stopperich and Connor Schmidt, a sophomore, Tanner Johnson, and a freshman, Hunter Bruce in the starting lineup with Morgret, the lone senior.
“I really like this group. They stayed focused and today was the first day we talked about winning the championship. I told them that this was about them. I told them I stayed focus and kept my composure in a life-and-death situation, so if they stayed focus and kept their composure, good things will happen to them.”