By George Caratzas

After the closure of the Heatherwood Golf Club in 2020, the Ward Melville Patriots JV girl’s golf team played their matches at Pine Ridge Golf Club in Coram. Now, the Patriots have found their newest home.

In May of 2024, the Spy Ring Golf Club opened on the same plot of land that Heatherwood once occupied in Centereach. With Ward Melville in the market for a new place to play, the match was an easy decision.

“I feel like this is a perfect fit,” head varsity coach Nicole Connelly said. “I think with Spy Ring, this is going to be a much smoother season for a variety of reasons.”

One of the reasons that Connelly mentioned was the course itself, as Spy Ring is the latest course to open on Long Island. Designed by Tyler Rae — a well-known golf course architect — Spy Ring is half the size of what Heatherwood was, only having 9 holes as opposed to the full 18. Nonetheless, Connelly was impressed by her team’s introduction to its new home turf.

“It’s a really great course,” Connelly said. “We got to play it on Thanksgiving Eve this past year and it was awesome. It’s such a great track, the layout is really fun to play and it’s really well maintained. I think the girls are going to have a really great experience.”

A key benefit of Spy Ring is its proximity to the high school. At Ward Melville, JV golf does not get access to a bus for practice or games, meaning that players are responsible for their own transportation to and from team events. While Pine Ridge was about a 15-minute drive from the school, Spy Ring cuts that travel time by two-thirds with the drive clocking in at just about five minutes.

“Not to bash Pine Ridge, but for us it just was not convenient at all,” Connelly said. “I had expressed interest to Spy Ring’s general manager Jimmi Conway and we started to lay the groundwork for the move. The convenience of having it in our own community was huge.”

As indicated by the name, Spy Ring pays homage to the Setauket Spy Ring — a spy network during the Revolutionary War which was based in the Three Village area. While Connelly is a native of Chicago, she has become immersed in the area’s history as she enters her fourth season at the helm of the golf program. She hopes the change will bring educational value to her over 20 student athletes that will have access to the course.

“Spy Ring is all about the community and its history,” Connelly said. “They get to learn about American history in seventh and eleventh grade so I definitely think this will expand their educational experience beyond that curriculum. It’s important to me that they learn about the history of their community and make that connection to their new golf course. Being a team from the Three Villages and being called the ‘Patriots,’ I think this change gives them a little bit of empowerment.”

In a statement provided to Connelly, Conway echoed a similar excitement for the new partnership.

“We are so proud to have our Three Village School Districts girl’s golf team represent our golf course,” Conway said. “We feel this team will be proud to host a match with visiting schools. We are very thankful for the support the local communities have had in regards to having a great impact on our success. We are looking forward to the ’25 season starting and my staff and I will be available to helping and grooming the growth of the game,” he said.

Aside from the Patriots, Connelly is pleased with what Spy Ring has done to the surrounding neighborhoods. 

“I think it’s going to have a really positive effect on the community,” Connelly said. “The course seems to be really working on establishing itself as a place where people can come together and even from the earliest conversations [Conway] told me that he wants to make it a gathering place for locals.”

With the JV team on the move, both the boys and girl’s varsity teams will continue to play at St. George’s Golf and Country Club in East Setauket.

George Caratzas is a reporter with The SBU Media Group, part of Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism’s Working Newsroom program for students and local media.