Berlin High School girls golf coach Jim Barnes looked out from the boisterous bus as it approached the Timberlin Golf Course clubhouse, after the team had won its first CIAC state championship in 2011.

“Sure enough, who’s banging out balls, but [eighth grader] Julia Kemmling,” Barnes said. “It was a foreshadowing. We’d be losing our No. 1 player Alyssa Scheyd to graduation, but Julia would soon be on board.”

And the line of gifted golfers would continue to tee it up and victories and state championships would follow for BHS.

The Redcoats followed their 2011 championship with state titles in ‘12 and ‘13, and Kemmling, playing in the No. 1 slot, posted average, nine-hole match scores of 38 and 39.

Depth was a dominant trait of the 2011, ‘12 and ‘13 CIAC title teams, which had a 96.2 match winning percentage (52-2).

The Redcoats came close to winning five straight CIAC titles with a second-place finish in 2014 and the championship in ‘15. “We had great players and pushed each other,” Kemmling said. “We wanted our team to be the best it could be.”

The typical match lineup in 2011 was: Scheyd, Victoria Fagan, Emily Stickel, Emily Deutsch and Caroline D’Attilio; in ‘12: Kemmling, Stickel, Fagan, D’Attilio and Deutsch; and in ‘13: Kemmling, D’Attilio, Deutsch, Caroline D’Attilio, Abbie Underwood and Emma Atkinson.

Five members later played collegiately: Kemmling (Quinnipiac), Fagan (Long Island University); Erika Park (Holy Cross); Scheyd (Lehigh) and Stickel (LeMoyne). The foundation for such advancement was Timberlin GC. “We’d play there all the time,” said Fagan, the 2012 captain. “In the summer it was 18 holes, go home, take a shower and with our hair still wet return to the course to play until the sun went down, and we couldn’t see anymore.”

Barnes, whose teams have won six CIAC championships, with the last two in the past two years, said he’d sometimes drive over to Timberlin GC during the summer to see who was on the range or practice green. Some current and soon-to-become BHS players always seemed to be there.

“Timberlin’s support of junior golf and its success then and now led right to high school,” said Scheyd, the 2011 Redcoats captain. “Playing on that 2011 title team and seeing where the program continues to go are pretty special.”