Pro golfer Rachel Rohanna talks about playing on boys team at Waynesburg, how perfection and golf don’t mix

By: Don Rebel
Thursday, June 4, 2020 | 11:57 AM

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Trib HSSN has been fortunate to cover a lot of great athletes over past two decades. While the ‘Best of the Century’ contest continues, we now feature some of these high school stars twice a week Monday and Thursday on the Rebel Yell podcast.

More than a decade later, 2009 Waynesburg Central High School graduate Rachel Rohanna doesn’t think much about being a female on a team of male golfers.

She was just playing the sport she loved with the best golfers from her school district.

“I had a lot of fun,” Rohanna said. “Growing up, I just loved competing so much. I always wanted to compete against the best and unfortunately, there weren’t too many girls in our area, but there were a lot of pretty good guys. Competing on the guys team and going back and forth between the No. 1 and No. 2 spot was pretty cool.”

Rohanna helped the Raiders claim district silver when Waynesburg Central was the 2007 WPIAL boys team golf Division II runner-up.

However Rohanna shined in the girls individual golf postseason.

She won both WPIAL and PIAA championships in her freshman and juniors years in 2005 and ‘07.

Rohanna made a splash well beyond her Greene County borders. She finished in 13th place at the PGA junior championships her senior year.

She went on to play golf in college at Ohio State and qualified for the LPGA pro golf tour. She played in the U.S. Women’s Open last summer in Charleston, S.C.

She has accomplished a lot on the course, except playing the perfect round.

“That’s something I have definitely struggled with my whole life, dropping the idea that golf is a game of perfection because it definitely is not,” Rohanna said. “You can go out there and practice all you want, hit balls and play every single day and there are just days it doesn’t go your way.”

She was one of 32 athletes in HSSN’s Best of the Century contest and she took time from her favorite place in the world to talk to us about her scholastic career.

Click to watch Don Rebel and James Dotson visit with Rachel Rohanna.

Tags: Waynesburg