Community Corner
Paging All Paige Pollak Fans
This week, we shine the spotlight on a LWE grad and Mokena resident who's hitting the links and excelling.
Welcome back.
Like poetry in motion, the club head is carefully and expertly coiled up and back. Then, in an instant, with ferocious velocity, it is brought back around, making contact and setting the ball off the tee as if it was fired from a cannon.
Jack Nicklaus? No. Nancy Lopez? Nada. Tiger Whatshisname? Not. Mokena's own Paige Pollak? Bingo!
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At age 7 Mokena resident Paige Pollak began golfing with her dad on weekends. In eighth grade she began taking golf lessons with Green Gardens Country Club Pro John Platt. Just about that time she started a regular tradition of thrashing her father, former Mokena Police Chief Steve Pollak, on the golf course. Any golf course.
Freshman year she made the Lincoln-Way East Girls' Golf team and ended up being the MVP on the Junior Varsity squad. As a sophomore she began a three-year stint on the LWE Varsity team.
Find out what's happening in Mokenawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
In Paige's senior year the LWE Girls' Golf team reached a milestone by qualifying, for the first time, for the state championship tournament in Carbondale, Ill.
She has been a regular at many tournaments, including the Southtown Star classic, and has the medals and awards to prove it.
By the time she graduated from LWE the golf bug had bitten her many times and she was eager to continue refining her golf skills and beating her dad. With encouragement and support from dad and mother Karen she continued her golf career by enrolling at Saint Mary's College at Notre Dame in Indiana. Besides being a fine educational venue with a top-notch nursing program, Saint Mary's also boasts a great golf team.
This was proven again recently when they took their conference championship and qualified for the NCAA Women's Division III National Championship Tournament. The tourney runs from May 8 through May 11 in Angola, Ind. Saint Mary's is seeded 16th. Paige is hoping to help the team by surpassing her best collegiate round of 77.
Along with golf, Paige is studying for a career in nursing. It is always a pleasure to cheer on our local athletes, no matter what age or amount of experience. Although she plays for Saint Mary's, Paige Pollak proudly declares she is from Mokena, a town she loves.
