Nico Ciolino had practiced hard and it should have been a dream come true when he was handed the championship trophy for a high school golf tournament on Tuesday.
But it wasn’t.
Emily Nash, also 16, had finished with the best score, but rules set by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association barred her from bringing home the top prize because she’s a girl.
The adults who organized the tournament may not have given Emily the trophy she deserved but Nico didn’t think twice about giving it up.
And by the time it was over, it was clear the two teenagers were the real adults in that sorry situation.
“I don’t win very often,” Nico told me yesterday from his Marlboro home.
“I like to call myself a good golfer, but it’s very hard to win in the tournaments I play in, so it’s very hard for me to kind of say, you know, give up the trophy. I don’t have a lot of them. It was tough. But I knew that she deserved it. She beat me fair and square. It was the right thing to do. She won. It didn’t mind me that she was a girl. We played from the same tees. We played in the same conditions.”
Nico, a junior, plays on the golf team at the Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School. Emily is a junior at Lunenburg High School. They were on the same foursome at the Central Massachusetts Division 3 boys’ golf tournament at Blissful Meadows Golf Club in Uxbridge.
There were nearly 60 boys and two girls, including Emily and a girl on Nico’s team. The 18-hole tournament was the first time Nico had competed against a female golfer.
Emily and Nico introduced themselves before teeing off and were quiet for the first couple of holes. By the eighth, Nico sparked up a conversation, asking Emily where she was going to college.
But at the 10th hole, Nico had to focus more because he was “a couple shots down to her.”
“It’s amazing because you have these 57 guys and she’s probably one of the best of them,” Nico said. “She’s down the middle. She probably didn’t miss a fairway. She doesn’t make mistakes.”
Nico ended up with a 79, Emily 75. “I knew what I had to do,” he said.
Tournament director Kevin Riordan told the crowd Emily had shot the lowest score but MIAA rules forbid her from winning. He then called out Nico’s name.
“I felt a little bit awkward,” Nico said. “It felt like I cheated in a sense because I didn’t win and I got the trophy. It didn’t feel right with me. I felt bad. It’s so hard winning tournaments. … It’s just so tough when you finally win and you get the results that you worked so hard for and then it’s like, ‘Oh wait, you can’t win. You’re a girl.’ ”
When the ceremony was over, Nico carried the trophy over to Emily’s table and said, “This is yours.”
“She started to say, ‘No, no, no. It’s OK,’ ” Nico said. “I’m like, ‘No. You won. You beat me. It’s only fair that you take it. You’re the champion.’ ”
The two went back and forth until Emily’s coach came over and told Nico it was OK.
Nico said the MIAA rules need to change. Since the tournament, Nico and Emily have connected on social media. Nico wanted to make sure she was OK — and she is.
The tournament organizers — the so-called adults in the room — could really learn a lesson from these two kids.