INDIANAPOLIS
For most of Saturday’s girls golf regional at Smock, a thick fog was keeping planes grounded at nearby Indy South Greenwood Airport — limiting what is often an unwelcome distraction for the golfers on the County Line Road course.
Not until Ellie Beavins stepped up to tap in her last putt of the day did a plane fly overhead — surely a sign from her late father, Joel.
“As she was knocking that putt in, the only plane that we saw all day came right over the top,” said Ellie’s mother, Jill Beavins. “So we feel pretty sure that he was here.”
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Last year’s regional was the last tournament that Joel Beavins got to see his daughter play in. Five days later, he was on a flight out of Greenwood that crashed in Michigan, eventually claiming his life.
Ellie Beavins dedicated her senior season at Franklin to doing her father proud — and on Saturday, she accomplished what she knew would have been his primary goal for her. Beavins shot a 76, earning herself an individual qualifying spot at this weekend’s state finals in Carmel.
It wasn’t a smooth ride at the start; Beavins was 4 over par after her first six holes. But she gathered herself and played at even par the rest of the way to post the third-lowest score of the day in a field that featured six of the state’s top 14 teams.
“I just told myself, ‘I know how bad you want to go to state, and you deserve it,” Ellie Beavins said. “You just have to start playing the golf that you know how to play.’ And after I said that, it just happened. I just kept grinding.”
Beavins said that she tried to keep her father out of her mind during her round and just stay focused on golf — “I can’t start thinking about him, because I’ll probably start crying,” she said. That wasn’t always easy; at one point on her penultimate hole, one of the other players in her group inquired about the “JB” embroidered on the back of the hat that Beavins (and all of her Franklin teammates) had on. But for the most part, she was able to keep her emotions in check until afterward.
That’s more or less something Beavins has been able to do throughout a successful senior season and the summer tournaments that preceded it. But when golf weather first arrived this spring, Grizzly Cub coaches Ted Bishop and Crystal Morse weren’t sure how Beavins was going to handle playing golf for the first time without her father there to watch.
“It could really go one way or the other, and we didn’t know,” Morse said.
Now we know. Beavins has been rock solid all fall, and by remaining so at the regional — the 76 represents the best round she’s ever shot there — she earned the opportunity to finish out her high school career on the grand stage.
“Hitting that (last) putt,” she said, “I was like, ‘All the work that I’ve been doing this season finally paid off.'”
Beavins’ Franklin teammates were sure that it would.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that Ellie deserves to go,” said junior Ava Ray, who shot a matching 76 to join Beavins as a state qualifier. “She’s worked so hard all year, and it’s all for Joel; everything that she’s done this year is for him, and it’s just amazing to be able to see her succeed.”
Keeping emotion out of it might be tough this weekend — the final round at Prairie View will be played on Saturday, which will also mark the one-year anniversary of her father’s accident. But those closest to Ellie are quite confident that she’ll come out relaxed and go out with a great performance.
“Today was the day was the day where she was feeling all the pressure,” Jill Beavins said. “Next weekend will be her first step forward, kind of beyond this past year. I think she’ll feel much less pressure and be more relaxed than she was today.
“I think she’ll play great next weekend. I do.”
Ryan O’Leary is the sports editor for the Daily Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].
