Girl power: Golfer eyes state prize

By Joe Scalzo

South Range senior has Division I talent

1Under normal circumstances, being a standard bearer combines all the excitement of sign-holding and keeping quiet.

But to Ariel Witmer, it turned out to be slightly more interesting. Because 2004 was the summer of Annika Sorenstam. And to a golfer who had just finished the sixth grade and dreamed of going pro one day, walking with Sorenstam for a couple hours was ... well, let Witmer tell it:

“It was the highlight of my life,” she said.

So far, anyway.

“I was really nervous at the end,” Witmer said. “Plus, we had to keep our distance, which wasn’t really fair.”

After the round, Witmer asked Sorenstam for her putter. (She said no.) But she and her sister Chelsea did get a picture with her, which they got signed when Chelsea shoved it into Sorenstam’s car as she was leaving.

(Call it a photo finish.)

Witmer, who is now a senior at South Range, started playing golf when she was 5. Her grandfather, Dale, was her first teacher. She played her first tournament when she was 7, hated golf by the time she was 11, started loving it again a few years ago and now is one of the contenders to win the Division II state title next month.

“That’s been her goal ever since she was a freshman,” said Raiders golf coach Bob Ferranti. “She wants to get to Columbus and play against the best.

“This is a big year for her.”

Witmer joined the Raiders’ varsity golf team as a freshman — the boys team, we might add; they don’t have a girls team — and was the team’s No. 1 midway through the season, a role she hasn’t relinquished.

She qualified for the state meet as a freshman and a sophomore (when she finished seventh) but just missed qualifying last fall when she had a bad round at the district meet.

“It’s in the past,” she said. “You can’t look back. There’s nothing I can do about it now.”

Witmer spends her summers playing tournaments across the country in California, Florida and New Mexico, to name a few.

She’s drawn interest from several Division I colleges in northeast Ohio — YSU, Akron, Kent and Cleveland State, to name a few — as well as Longwood University in Virginia. Michigan and Illinois have also called Ferranti and recruiting generally heats up in late fall.

Witmer dreams of eventually playing on the LPGA Tour, but her backup plan is to become a veterinarian, specializing in larger animals such as horses, cows and pigs.

Why a veterinarian? Well, she loves animals for one thing. She grew up on a farm and her sister still has two horses.

Plus, her original plan to become a brain surgeon didn’t stick (“I don’t know what happened there”), nor did her plans to become a doctor (“I couldn’t stand poking needles into humans”), a dentist (“I can’t stand teeth”) or a pet vet (she doesn’t want to put a dog or cat down).

Virginia makes the most sense from a golfing perspective — you may have heard the weather is a little better down there — but Witmer is a homebody and, well, she’s not a huge fan of the heat.

“I have to see snow,” she said.

That decision can wait, though.

She still has a little work left to do first.

“I feel like I have a really good chance [of winning state],” she said. “That’s all I’m thinking about right now.”

scalzo@vindy.com