Longtime basketball coach Mike Joyce is now also the coach for the girls club golf team. Later this year, he will apply to register girls golf as a varsity sport at the high school.

Groundskeepers had worked overtime around the Island to get golf courses ready for last Monday's opening and golfers were eager to hit the links.

The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School golf team finished 7th out of 11 teams in the state division 3 golf tournament Monday afternoon at the Black Swan Country Club in Georgetown.

Coach Doug DeBettencourt's high school golf team finished seventh on Monday at the Division III state tournament. It was the latest success in a career that mixed algebraic equations with fairway splendors.

Finn Simpkins has helped lead the high school golf tournament to the state tournament again this year. The senior is also an elite skier and looking ahead to a potential collegiate golf career.

The regional high school golf team took 10th place of 12 in the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletics Association state tournament Monday. The match was played at the Wyantenuck Country Club in Great Barrington. Senior cocaptain Matt Marchand had the lowest score for the Vineyard, shooting a 79 to finish 20th overall. Senior cocaptain Kat deBettencourt shot an 81 to finish 28th.

Why don’t more women play golf? According to the National Golf Foundation, the number of U.S. women playing golf declined from seven million in 2005 to 5.4 million in 2010 to 5.1 million in 2011. There are no figures from 2012 yet. According to a 2010 golf foundation survey, only 20 per cent of players in 2009 were women and girls from the age of six up, and they accounted for just 17 per cent of the rounds played. The foundation’s 2007 golf consumer profile reported that 60 per cent of women were embarrassed that they didn’t play better or know more about golf, and a majority were “intimidated by other players, by the staff or by the environment in general.”

While most of the regional high school’s sports teams have been busy contending with league play and thinking ahead toward their final games of the season, the golf team was quietly securing a place in the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletics Association tournament. The team’s season ended Wednesday with a 38-18 match play victory over Cape Cod Regional Tech, but they locked up a tournament spot last Thursday, defeating Falmouth for their 10th win. The golfers finish the regular season with an 11-9 record.

The Vineyard field hockey and golf teams have both qualified for the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association state tournament.

This could be you: Owner of a majestic summer island home with a sweeping vista of Edgartown Harbor, Nantucket Sound and Cape Poge gut; Steward of 18 acres of marsh, cliffs and wooded hills on Chappaquiddick’s North Neck area; and, not least, head of the Royal & Ancient Chappaquiddick Links, a nine-hole golf course cut from the land more than 100 years ago.