RC Stevens ahead of the game with golf simulator
Raiders practice indoors with state-of-the-art resources
RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) - While school is out for summer, golfers at Rapid City Stevens just can’t seem to say away.
The Raiders recently got a golf simulator and it’s getting lots of use.
“A couple other teams had launch monitors,” Stevens golf coach Nick Rotella said of what made them interested. “The guts, the brains of that whole thing. And they were bringing it out to the range. It was getting them carry distances and it looked really cool. And that was the first time that coach Dannenbring and I kind of thought about trying to put together a proposal.”
The first proposal didn’t go through, but Rotella and Dannenbring tried until it did. Now, inside Heier Gymnasium, the Raiders have a fully functional golf simulator, giving athletes about every metric you can think of.
“It’s just a few things that are very hard to eyeball on the range,” Rotella explained.
“Just knowing that you have a controlled environment and you are going to be able to get all the numbers, maybe that you don’t want, but you’re going to see them and you’re going to know that they’re right, it’s really nice having,” Stevens rising sophomore Cole Jansen said.
It has a lot of numbers and a user-friendly interface that allows you to fully customize your shot.
“If my ball is going way right, which it usually does with my drive and stuff, then I can like angle myself certain ways that...and it just feels easier like in the simulator cause I’m not like turning everywhere,” Stevens rising freshman Liliana Van der Wyst said.
Nothing beats hitting the range or playing 18, but with South Dakota’s unpredictable weather, there’s now never an excuse as to why you can’t work on your game.
“It’s never going to translate perfect,” Rotella said. “There’s no substitute for getting out and hitting a ball off of grass, finding that bad lie, every lie in there is a perfect lie off of Astroturf. But yeah, it’s nice that something is always better than nothing.”
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