Without a girls golf team, Sarah and Jessica Spicer teeing up with the boys

Mike and Maria Spicer had little trouble occupying their daughters’ time growing up.

Identical twins Sarah and Jessica Spicer first latched on to synchronized skating at age 5 and then golf at 7. Those two time-consuming sports offer few windows for a kid to complain to their parents, “I’m bored.”

“It was easy for them to drop us off for the day,” said Jessica with a laugh.

The twins were first were hooked on skating when their mother took them to see a performance of “The Nutcracker on Ice”.

A couple years later, they went with their father to a local golf course.

“We went with him to the range every day,” said Sarah, who is older by a couple of minutes. “We were having fun. We entered some local tournaments and then more tournaments. We worked our way up to USGA events.”

Now they’re seniors competing on Northern Durham’s boys golf team and are committed to play for Virginia Tech’s women’s team. Northern almost added a girls program this fall, but the absence of one allows the Spicers to tee up with the boys.

The twins had been home-schooled, but as juniors they thought they would benefit from high school golf’s team aspect and enrolled at Northern. When they did, the girls golf season was already behind them.

“We wanted the high school experience,” Sarah said. “We did synchronized skating for 10 years, and we missed being on a team. This has been exciting for us. We like the team atmosphere.”

Sarah and Jessica say they recognized golf as their sporting future once they reached their mid-teens. They couldn’t excel at two sports requiring extensive time without sacrificing their potential at one – or both. Attracting college golf recruiting interest helped them decide.

“We liked the girls and the coaches at Virginia Tech,” Jessica said. “It seems like a place we can excel. We also felt we liked it as a school, even if we weren’t playing golf.”

Now the 18-year-olds are All-PAC 6 players hoping to help the Knights advance past the N.C. High School Athletic Association regionals to state competition.

The twins – ranked No. 2 (Sarah) and No. 7 (Jessica), respectively by the Tarheel Youth Golf Association – are so close in ability they flip-flop finishing second and third behind Northern’s No. 1 player, UNC-Greensboro-bound Michael Wicker.

“It’s been great,” Jessica said. “It’s so much more fun on a team when you win and not as bad losing (individually).”

Despite being new to the school and joining a boys team, veteran Knights coach (and Michael Wicker’s father) Kevin Wicker said the twins quickly fit in with their male teammates.

“The boys listen to what they have to say about techniques, including Michael,” Kevin Wicker said. “They see how the girls handle themselves and see how they want to improve. They see it in the matches and they see in practice.”

The twins also are a study for parents torn between raising twins together and separating them at times to gain their own identity. Sarah and Jessica came to the same decisions they loved synchronized skating, later to give it up in favor of golf, to play on the Northern boys team and to commit Virginia Tech.

“I know other sets of twins are encouraged to do different things and be their own person,” Sarah said. “My sister and I love doing everything together. We’ve always had about the same ability in skating and golf, and we’ve always been on the same page when we looked for things to do.”

That made it easy for their parents to drop them off for the day at the rink or the golf course.

This story was originally published April 17, 2016 at 11:41 AM with the headline "Without a girls golf team, Sarah and Jessica Spicer teeing up with the boys."