Madison O’Connor and Gianna Pangalio had every reason to never touch a golf club again.

O’Connor picked up a club one time prior to arriving at Fountain-Fort Carson High School and accidentally hit her little brother with it. Pangalio swung a club on two occasions and plunked her father in the back of the head with a misdirected ball.

Now, both are seniors and are expected to be among the top players for the Trojans’ girls’ golf team.

As surprising as that may seem, it’s the norm for F-FC co-coaches Jim Jorgensen and Mike Maiurro, who started the program from scratch 13 years ago. With no country clubs in the school’s geographic area, few girls arrive at the school with a golfing background.

“Most kids, somewhere along the line, they’ve probably played putt-putt,” Maiurro said. “Those would be experienced golfers to us.”

While he was making a joke, he wasn’t exaggerating. Of the 13 players on the team for 2013, the coaches had to teach 11 how to hold a club. The other two had extremely limited golfing exposure.

O’Connor, a swimmer and softball player who was looking for a spring sport, got talked into coming out for the golf team by Maiurro, a family friend. Pangalio, a softball and volleyball player, got “suckered into it” by a former member of the golf team.

Each played junior varsity as freshmen, shooting in the 60s for nine holes. As sophomores they rotated between JV and varsity. They improved considerably as juniors, with O’Connor shooting a low of 102 and Pangalio scoring a 104.

They have the same goal for their senior seasons.

“That’s my goal this year – to break 100,” O’Connor said.

Growing up in golf in high school has created a strong bond for the players and coaches in the program. Jorgensen’s and Maiurro’s genial nature also helped the girls enjoy the change of sport.

“It was an easy transition,” O’Connor said. “The golf itself was difficult, but (the coaches) made it easier.”

“They’re there for me,” Pangalio agreed. “They’re like family now.”

And while the golf team has become like family, both of the girls’ real families have taken up golf. Neither had been active in the game until the girls began playing.

“As a family we’ll go out to the range and hit a few bags of balls,” O’Connor said. “That’s really nice.”

Success stories like that keep Jorgensen and Maiurro motivated. Each year they try to find at least two new girls to enter the program to, as Maiurro put it, “keep that lifeblood rolling through.”

“It has always been an adventure,” he said.

That much was evident at practice on Monday, where Maiurro was teaching the girls how to fill out a scorecard. Afterward, they practiced putting indoors because of snow, using obsolete floor-mounted ethernet conduits as the holes.

Hey, that might be a good gimmick for a putt-putt course.