Jack Clark was sports editor of the Alameda Times-Star for 62 years. In all that time, he wondered why Alameda High School never had a girls golf team.

This fall, it finally happened. The first Alameda High girls golf team came into existence, and that team promptly won the North Coast Section Championship, beating perennial favorite Monte Vista by two strokes.

That team was recognized for their achievement at the Feb. 20 meeting of the golf commission. Mayor Beverly Johnson was on hand to give the framed proclamation to Emily Childs, Grace Na, Anna Cruz, Samantha Esguerra, Frances Ancheta and coach Stephen Burnett.

But these girls were not done. The next weekend four of them entered qualifying matches for the San Francisco City Championship, a trophy with names such as US Open champ Juli Inkster, US Junior and US Amateur champ Dorothy Delasin, former LPGA president Shelley Hamlin — and then 12-year-old Martha Burkhard of Alameda.

Grace Na, a sophomore at Alameda High, was runner-up to Diane Kwon in last year’s city championship. But this year Na was beat in the quarterfinals by Dorothy Schwartz of San Jose, 1-up, at Harding Park.

Emily Childs advanced to the finals with a 4-and-3 victory over highly regarded Kelly Wilson of Cameron Park. Schwartz was waiting for Childs in the championship match.

Childs had her name engraved on the trophy with a 1-up victory over Schwartz over 36 holes. It was a very tight match. The two were deadlocked, all-square, through most of the afternoon back nine.

Childs broke the deadlock with a 20-foot birdie putt on the par-3 17th hole to take a 1-up lead. She won the trophy when both made bogey on the difficult finishing hole, which will be highlighted around the world in the 2009 President’s Cup at Harding Park, with Tiger Woods and company.

Childs won the title 22 years after her father, John Childs, was a medallist in the same championship.

Former USGA president Sandy Tatum handed Emily Childs the trophy.

No one was happier than Childs that a girls golf team was finally formed at Alameda High.

The past two years she competed individually for the Hornets, without a team, in high school tournaments.

She earned First Team All-League honors and was named First Team All-East Bay as a junior, without a team. She is captain of a team this year.

In 2007, Childs was awarded a medal for qualifying for four USGA Girl’s Championships.

She has accepted a full scholarship to the University of Colorado.

Scholarships are nothing new to girls from the Alameda Junior Golf Club. Ki Shui Liao is currently playing for the Stanford golf team, as did Wendra Liang.

Mia Kabasakalis is at Harvard. Martha Burkard is playing for Oregon State.

With that kind of talent in town, it is easy to wonder why it took so long to form a team at the high school. And now the school board has voted to eliminate high school sports, putting this new team in jeopardy, so soon after its birth.

If that board would just sit down for a second, and realize the notoriety these girls are bringing to Alameda High — notoriety that money can’t buy — maybe they would change their minds.

That’s what Jack Clark would say.

Award-winning golf writer Ron Salsig can be reached at