The little girl was crying again.

She just couldn’t understand this game of golf, couldn’t understand why she couldn’t excel, couldn’t understand how or why it was getting the best of her.

So she cried. And when she did, her father would go through the same routine: ‘You’re done for the day’, he’d tell her, and the little girl would walk back to the cart.

“When she was young, she wanted to be playing great,” the father, Rick Posmantur, says now.

That once little girl is now a high school junior at Interlake. And that frustrating game? Well, it’s not so tough anymore for her either.

Gabe Barnow doesn’t cry on the golf course anymore.

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With her scores on the links, it’d be easy to think Barnow, 17, was making opponents cry. After all, in eight matches this year, only twice has another golfer been within five strokes of her, and both times, it was teammate Jessica Parker. In the eight matches Interlake has played this season, Barnow has medaled (taken first) in all eight.

“She’s been on a meteoric rise this year,” said coach Scott Marcum. “She’s gone from being a pretty good high school player, to a dominant one.”

Yet, opposing players and coaches alike love her. The other coaches in the league think the world of her, Marcum said, noting that she’s “the kid that everyone else on the other teams want to play with.”

It’s a statement echoed around the league.

“She’s a competitor, but seems to have the game in perspective,” said Newport golf coach Frank Nimmo. “She’s just real pleasant to be around. It’s great to have someone like that in the league.”

Barnow’s take?

“I’m just outgoing and I like to talk to the other girls,” she says. “When I play, I try to play like a professional; I try to stay focused.”

Focus. That’s something Barnow knows plenty about, being one of 70 students enrolled in Interlake’s International Baccalaureate program, and one of only 40 enrolled in the school’s Gifted High School Program, the only such program in the nation. As a result, Barnow takes six IB classes, all honors classes, and will graduate this year as a junior.

“School is definitely hard and it’s definitely stressful, but I love it,” Barnow said. “Golf is fun and I work hard at it, but it’s not as hard as school.”

Her aptitude in the classroom and athletic skill outside of it is what impresses those closest to the academic side the most.

“It’s amazing she does so well [in school], with how much time it takes to be very good at golf,” said Michael O’Byrne, the International Baccalaureate program coordinator at Interlake. “These kids are basically doing college-level coursework in six different subject areas. It’s a pretty big time commitment and it’s not easy either.”

Which makes her accomplishments on the course even more special to those like her coach and her parents, Felice Barnow and Rick Posmantur. After qualifying for state the past two years, and helping the Saints to a state title in 2007, Barnow is turning out her finest campaign yet. The biggest factor in the improvement, she said, is a golf camp she attended at Pebble Beach last summer.

“I have never practiced that much in my life, and that made the biggest difference,” said Barnow, who will attend Western Washington University next fall.

The result? A completely different golfer, Marcum says. Barnow leads the conference in birdies (6), pars (25) and total dual match points (30).

“This was inside her, the ability to shoot these scores,” Marcum said. “Maybe she didn’t realize that before. But when she came back from that camp, there was zero doubt she was the best player in the league.”

Her performances have gotten people talking, including a May 4 round against Redmond in atrocious conditions in which she won by four strokes. But what has undoubtably gotten the most attention is Barnow’s April 23 round at Sahalee Golf Course in Sammamish, in which she shot a one-over par 37.

“One of the coaches of the other teams just said ‘wow, there’s pros that don’t shoot that at that course,'” Marcum said.

“I came to school the next day and random kids were asking me if I was the one who shot a 37 at Sahalee,” Barnow added, laughing. “Everything was just going right that day. I was just on.”

So those days of crying on the course are long gone, replaced by a dominating win streak rivaled only by the respect she’s garnered around the league.

“She takes a lot of pride in the way she handles herself on the golf course,” Marcum said. “She understands her swing, she understands her game and she understands where she’s at in life, more than any other kid walking this campus.”