CHAPEL HILL -- Every so often, an idea comes along that's so simple and yet so smart, observers wonder why no one thought of it years ago.

So it is with the six schools that have banded together to form the Central Carolina Golf Conference, which exists solely for the purpose of organizing and promoting golf for high school girls.

The new league comprises Carrboro, Chapel Hill, East Chapel Hill, Burlington's Walter Williams, Northwood and Southern Lee. Each belongs to a N.C. High School Athletic Association conference that for one reason or another can't create a critical mass for a true league championship. For example, East Chapel Hill and Chapel Hill are members of the PAC-6, but are the only two of eight members that offer girls golf.

Difficult as it is to believe, none of the Durham high schools has a girls team. Jordan almost touches Hope Valley; Northern Durham and Riverside are so close to Treyburn, one might expect to find a few errant golf balls mis-hit onto the campuses. Yet not even they feature girls golf.

"I like the idea of a conference dedicated to golf," East Chapel Hill coach Henry Essey says. "I'd be happy if all the teams in the PAC-6 were in it, but the schools simply don't have a team."

Essey, whose day job as an exec with Bank of America hasn't prevented him from becoming the dean of local golf coaches, says that all the Central Carolina coaches arrived at the same idea more or less at the same time.

"We just had to take matters into our own hands," he says. "East would play Chapel Hill and Chapel Hill would play East and maybe another team would schedule a match with both of us and another team wouldn't. Everyone was scattered all over, and no one played the same number of matches."

Carrboro coach Brenda Leeper, who coached at Chapel Hill before the schools system's 2006 redistricting, saw other area schools coalescing into golf-only conferences, and she realized Chapel Hill and Carrboro could be shut out if they didn't do something.

"Green Hope is in a golf conference; Lee Senior is in a conference," she noted. "If you're not in a conference, you have to scramble to make up your own matches; the season is basically just practice. There are no records, no rankings."

At first, Leeper approached Durham's PAC-6 high schools that have boys teams, hoping they would rekindle their girls programs. Not interested, they said. In the 1-A/2-A ranks, N.C. Science & Math wanted to join, but couldn't marshal the funds needed for greens fees and travel expenses.

Eventually, the net was thrown wide enough to draw in Williams from Alamance, Southern Lee and Northwood from Chatham County.

"Our coaches were willing to sit down and put a lot of thought into this," Leeper said. "We looked at a lot of conferences, took ideas from them and modified what we needed for our own use."

The Central Carolina Conference will play a regular season of five, nine-hole matches, with each team taking a turn to host. (East and CHHS are co-hosting a home match Oct. 6 at Chapel Hill Country Club. Future schedules may expand to six regular matches.)

A post-season championship tournament is scheduled for Oct. 14 at The Governors Club. All-conference honors will be awarded after that 18-hole event, based on stroke average for the season.

Leeper, Essey and CHHS coach Jim Williams all praised the local clubs for their help. Without donated green fees and tee times from courses like Chapel Hill Country Club, Chapel Ridge and The Preserve, the schools could not have afforded to field teams, the coaches agreed.

Chapel Ridge hosted the inaugural match in late August, with Leeper's Carrboro team acting as organizers.

Led by medalist Michelle Ahn's 34, Chapel Hill won by a two-stroke margin over Southern Lee. Notably, each of the five schools placed two golfers among the top 15. (See Scoreboard for fuller results.)

Every school has a contender for top honors this fall: Northwood features Emily Brooks and Avri Smith; Southern Lee has Karli Heimbecker; Williams' Alex Varner, East's Mackie Kennihan and CHHS ninth-grader all should consistently shoot for top-10 finishes.

Caitlyn Threadgill, Julia Holt and Samantha Kielpinski were Carrboro's top three scorers in the first match of the year, all within three strokes of each other. Jessica Todloski and Tosin Olufolabi also competed. Ninth-graders Caterina Kielpinski and Alexandra Mauch could get their chances in later matches.

East can expect that Kennihan and Michelle Hogan will probably turn in the top two cards each match. The Wildcats have other juniors, such as left-handed twins Brittany and Stephanie Vipperman, but none of the other Wildcats have as much experience as Kennihan and Hogan. That includes Katie Kotz, Elizabeth Peel, Kristin Dlesk, Laura Pope and Grace Bae.

Though Chapel Hill graduated senior captain Amanda Kolb and saw two top players from last year move out of state, CHHS still has three top players back to go with three promising newcomers. Ahn, ranked 256th nationally and tops among N.C.'s class of 2009, can be expected to card the Tigers' best score in most matches. Junior Blythe Carter and sophomore Emma Marlatt bring experience to the tee, while Jones brings a new face; she finished seventh at the first match. Mary Naegle and Glenna Jones are on their first year of varsity play.

"Michelle seems really focused this year, and she's stepping nicely into the role of senior leader," Williams said. "I really like the way this team is gelling."