One fore the girls:

Helen Kunick is coaching a team she wishes she had in high school, and that makes it all the more merry to make history.

Port Washington and Grafton started a junior varsity co-op  girls’ golf team. It’s the first of any kind for both schools.

Kunick, a Division 1 golfer in college who teaches English at Grafton High School, was the boys’ golf coach from 2002 to 2009 and is now an assistant. She had been waiting for a girls’ team to start.

Grafton Athletic Director Kevin Moore and Port Washington’s John Bunyan knew they didn’t have enough for their schools to each have a team, but combining made it work.

About 12 girls are on the squad. Ages range from freshman to senior, as do the reasons they joined and experience level.

“My dad’s a big golfer and for years I split my time between softball and golf. There being a girls’ team, I made my decision to focus on golf,” Port senior Kyla Schall said. “I like that you can be very individual, on your own, and I like being outside.”

Grafton sophomore Kailyn Kelly’s father is the pro at the West Bend Country Club. She has been golfing since she was 5.

“I like being outside. It’s peaceful whenever you’re out by yourself and there’s nobody else around,” she said.

Grafton all-state soccer player Katelyn Valenta is giving golf a try as a senior.

“I just wanted to try something new instead of soccer,” she said. “It’s fun learning something new that you’re not used to doing.”

Her soccer teammate, sophomore Mila Dotson, also joined.

“I just wanted to try something different with my friend,” Dotson said.

For Port senior Ellie Lanser, this is her second sport in its infancy. She is also on the Port-Grafton girls’ flag football team. She just started golfing last year.

“It’s just kind of a fun environment,” she said.

Port freshman Stella Braley said her grandfather and cousin work at Missing Links Golf Course in Mequon, and her uncle and father like to play.

Beyond trying a new sport, “I get to meet new people,” she said.

That’s one of the same reasons Grafton junior Brooke LaMontagne, who likes golfing with her father, joined the team.

“You get to bond with the people you’re golfing with,” she said.

Grafton junior Kenzie Klug-Steffen said she is “just trying to branch out and try different things.”

Grafton junior Elise Jacobson is returning to the sport because of the co-op team.

“I did it as a kid and I wanted to pick it up since we’re starting it in Grafton and Port,” she said.

Grafton senior Paisley Williams played with the boys’ team as a freshman and sophomore before taking off last year to work in the kitchen at Edgewater Golf Club in Grafton.

“I’m really happy that there’s a girls’ team,” she said. “I like challenging myself. I like being outside.”

Grafton junior Olivia Feinberg said she isn’t sure if she would have tried golf if she had to join the boys’ team since she doesn’t know any of the players. She likes the leadership she has received so far.

“I like Mrs. Kunick as a coach,” she said.

Kunick knows what it’s like to play with boys. She grew up in Collingwood, Ontario, a two hour-drive north of Toronto, without a girls’ golf team,

She had to play the men’s tees with the boys for most meets. Some courses were more than 7,000 yards. She was hitting driver, then 3-wood most of the time.

“In tournaments, I was the only female,” she said.

But Kunick excelled and played Division 1 golf for Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.

She has coached at least a couple of girls during her time with the boys’ team.

Maddie Wimmer, a 2017 grad, played in college and is now the girls’ golf coach at Kettle Moraine Lutheran.

Kendyl Conrad, who graduated in 2026, helped the Black Hawks to the North Shore Conference title in 2025, the school’s first since 1992. She will golf in college as well.

Kunick said the co-op team, which starts at the junior varsity level, waited a year to form to allow Conrad to finish her career with the varsity boys.

Kunick is overjoyed to see enough interest in girls’ golf to form a team. She has heard stories of business trips in which men are booked to play golf and women are sent to the spa, and would like to break that mold. That’s one of the reasons Port freshman Elle Econom joined the team.

“I learned it for business in the future. A lot of deals go down during golf,” she said.

Kunick said the team is taking to the sport.

“I’m working with a bunch of great athletes. They’re committed. They aren’t afraid,” she said. “The game is so hard. Here they are coming back every day, no frustration.”

Some of the players have never even hit a shot out of the sand and are learning new skills.

“That’s part of the excitement as well,” Kunick said.

The lifelong sport, she said, doesn’t have to start during childhood.

“It can be a late-development sport,” she said.

The plan is to play as a co-op team for two years before Port and Grafton have enough golfers to field their own teams, she said.