LARRY HANSON
CATHOLIC HERALD STAFF
While she was waiting for other players and sizing up a putt at University Ridge Golf Course in Madison during the opening round of the WIAA girls state golf tournament on Monday, Oct. 14, Catholic Memorial senior Meredith Boos saw a snake that she said she thought, “looked cold.”
Boos took a brief moment and picked up the 18-inch serpent, walking it over to the woods and setting it free.
It was a completely on-brand moment for Boos, who plans to be a veterinarian after college and who is described by coach Steve Plechaty as someone who just radiates kindness to all of those around her.
“Most of the amazing things about Meredith are not really golf related,” Plechaty said. “What’s going to be amazing to see beyond golf and beyond high school is what she does. That’s going to be a great story to follow. There’s going to be a Catholic, spiritual side to that that’s going to parallel what she does. She’s about being kind and respectful to people, and I think that’s going to come out in whatever she does. She’s going to help people, and that’s probably more important than any other accomplishment.”
While she is a strong student (she is looking at colleges in western states, including the University of Montana) and she has done mission work with her parents in Tanzania working with the marginalized albino population, her accomplishments on the golf course are nothing to overlook.
“In Tanzania, from an early age, my thing was animals,” Boos said. “I wrote my college essay about an experience I had in Tanzania where I saw a monkey and it kind of sparked this love of animals for me.”
She followed up her 19th-place finish at state as a junior by finishing 12th as a senior after shooting 75-85—160 for the two days.
After the first day of the meet, she was just three strokes back of the leader and sitting in second place with 41-34–75. However, an eight on a par-4 and a double bogey within the first six holes of her second round knocked her out of title contention.
How she responded, though, is what impressed Plechaty the most. She followed the double bogey with the first of her two birdies on the day and shot a 40 on the back nine after shooting a 45 on the first nine holes.
“There was a lot of bounceback,” Plechaty said. “In the disappointment of maybe having an 85, if you look inside of that, there was a lot holes where she fought back and followed with a par. To her credit, as much as it was a struggling day, she fought through the whole thing to make it a respectable number. The score doesn’t define who you are as a golfer or as a person. It’s how you manage with all of that and I give Meredith a lot of credit because there were a lot of opportunities to just throw in the towel and just say, ‘This isn’t going to work out today.’”
“It really is a mental game,” Boos said. “One of the things my dad always says is, ‘Number one, focus, and number two, grinding. So, when you have a bad hole, you have to come back to the next hole. As hard as it is to erase what you just did, and come back and try to grind to a decent score.”
Her parents, Eric and Karene Boos, did their first missionary trip in Tanzania two days after they were married in 1995. Meredith Boos has accompanied them on four different missions, including attending her sophomore year of high school in the African nation.
“It was a big change, kind of a culture shock,” Boos said. “I had been there before, but to spend an entire year there was really quite an experience. I really enjoyed going to school over there and I met a lot of really cool people and I have a lot of fun stories to tell.”
