During the Women’s Golf 2017 season there were wildfires occurring in Sonoma and Napa Valley.  This conflicted with our games and practices and cancelled a whole week of the season because the smoke blew down to us putting us in a hazardous air quality condition.  We had two different smoke experiences at our home course the Contra Costa Country Club.  

The first encounter with the smoke was when we were playing a match against our school’s rival Alhambra.  I, myself, was on the fifth hole when this all went down.  I was playing with my teammate and two of the Alhambra players and the other eight girls were at the sixth and seventh hole.  We were not sure what was happening, but heard what sounded like small explosions, fireworks, or maybe even gunshots; which was slightly scary.  Our coaches were nowhere to be seen, so we tried to call and text them to find out what was going on.  We could see the smoke traveling across the course coming towards us; then we saw fire trucks and police cars flying by on the road towards the club house.  Six fire trucks went by along with three police cars.  Our coaches finally came by and told us to head to the farthest hole away from the direction of the smoke because it was the range storage shed that had caught on fire and the fertilizers were burning and releasing chemicals into the air.  We were going to wait it out, but after this no one’s head was in the game so we had to reschedule for a later date.

The second time we ended because of a fire was a few days later.  We were also playing a game at CCCC, on Wednesday, and in the middle had to cancel because the coaches felt it was not safe to continue the game.  This was because the wildfires from the north had blown down,  and that same week school was even cancelled on Thursday and Friday.