Among LFA’s wide variety of athletics teams, people tend to overlook LFA’s golf team. This year the Boys’ Varsity Golf Team finished with a record of 7-3 which included a win over a public school powerhouse—Warren. Although the accomplishments and victories are great, the golf team has a more important and meaningful tradition: The Gerber Cup. 

The Gerber Cup, established back in 2004, is named after Adam Gerber, a former golf coach. The event is based on the famous golf event, the Ryder Cup. The three days of intense golf are formatted with team golf competitions including alternate shot, best ball, and singles. These formats mimic the Ryder Cup. 

Gerber Cup founder and LFA golf coach, Matt Vaughn, stated, “We had a Friday practice at Deerpath [and] I wanted to do a fun practice because it was nearing the end of the year. The Ryder Cup was going on that weekend [so] I came up with an intrasquad competition.” Vaughn did not believe that this competition would stick. However a former LFA head golf coach Jon Freeman took over and kept the tradition going. He made a prize that the winners each receive Arnold Palmers and the illustrious trophy. 

Vaughn also says that in recent years, “We tried to promote the Gerber Cup in morning meeting announcements and made it a big deal three years ago and had a lot of fun with it. We do teasers in early September in morning meetings to play it up.” For the golf team, this is what the season plays for, while also being a good way to top off an exciting year with your teammates. 

This year’s head coach Ben Wetherbee said “I think that golf is a fairly individual sport a lot of the time, you are often playing for an individual score. I think it just brings the team component of the sport out more than other formats.”

Because there were only two seniors on the team this year, team red was led by T.J. Minsky and team blue was led by Thomas Tobin. Coming into the three day tournament, Thomas’ team was considered the underdogs as team red had three of the top players on the team. Despite the adversity, Team Blue led the first two days and only needed two wins for the single matches. 

Tobin ‘23 said, “The competitive nature of the cup is by far the most important aspect and why I drafted my team to be the way that it was.” Team red wanted to make the biggest comeback in Gerber Cup history, starting off hot, but were too late, as team blue absolutely dominated and hoisted the Gerber Cup. The Gerber Cup will continue to be the biggest event for the golf team and will hopefully be on the radar for more LFA students.