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Five years ago, when Organ Mountain High School golfer Eleanor Warden walked into the state tournament as an eighth grader, she walked in alone.
There was no girls team.
No teammates warming up beside her. No score to chase together. Just Warden, representing a program that technically existed, but only barely. By the end of this spring, she stood in the middle of something entirely different.
A championship team.
The Knights captured the first girls golf state title in school history this season, building a commanding lead on the opening day of the Class 5A tournament before winning the championship by 16 strokes. Warden finished second individually with a two-day score of 155, while freshman Sofia Torrez tied for third at 160 and junior Alyssa Serna placed fifth at 162. Gabriella Dibiaso added a top-20 finish as the Knights completed a climb that started with a single player and a long-range vision.
“I was only one on the girls team at that point,” Warden said of her eighth-grade season, when she won the 2022 individual state championship. “There was literally no team.”
That season could have felt temporary — a talented young golfer competing for herself while representing a school that did not yet have enough players to build around her. Instead, Warden saw possibility.
“I was like, okay, well, we can fix that later on,” she said.
The foundation started forming almost immediately. Serna joined the following season, also qualifying for state as an eighth grader. Others slowly followed. Then came Torrez, who admits she never planned on high school golf becoming such a major part of her life.
At the time, she was just hitting balls with her father when Warden approached her.
“She was like, ‘How old are you?’” Torrez said, laughing. “That sounds really creepy now. But she told me, ‘You should really think about playing high school golf.’”
Torrez showed up to practice knowing almost nobody. Now she is part of the first championship team in program history.
For Warden, recruiting younger golfers became about more than building numbers. She wanted to create opportunities.
“Everyone always says it’s probably one of the most likely sports you’ll get a scholarship for,” Warden said. “Not many people, especially girls, play golf.”
But the growth of the program became about much more than golf scholarships or tournament scores. The Knights built a culture.
One centered on accountability, daily work and a shared pressure that changed the way they approached a sport most people still view as individual.
“If I’m not having such a good day, okay, how can I make up strokes for my team so we can win state?” Warden said. “Every stroke matters.”
The Knights practiced like a championship program long before they officially became one — daily team sessions, summer work and extra hours on their own.
“I think everybody out here works very, very hard,” Torrez said. “And I think that’s what makes us all so special.”
What separated the team, though, may have been the balance between competitiveness and support. The older players coached younger teammates through nerves and expectations as much as mechanics.
“You can tell when someone looks nervous,” Warden said. “Talking them through it — like, ‘It’s okay to be nervous. It’s okay to mess up sometimes.’ Everybody gets nervous.”
Torrez already understands what comes next. With Warden graduating and headed to Brown University to study engineering, the freshman knows the responsibility will shift to the next generation.
“When Eleanor is gone, that’s going to be a lot of space to make up,” Torrez said. “But I know we can do it.”
And maybe that is the clearest sign of how far the program has come. Five years ago, Organ Mountain girls golf barely had enough players to exist. Now it has younger golfers to mentor and championship expectations to maintain.
Soon, the team’s photo will hang on the school’s wall of state champions alongside Warden’s individual title picture from her eighth-grade season.
“I think somebody will see it and be like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing,’” Serna said. “That is the first girls team to ever win state. I want to do that.”
Five years after walking into the state tournament alone, Warden no longer has to wonder whether anyone would follow.
