Women’s golf has played well this season, but after winning the Millikin Spring Invitational, the Vikings are looking for a strong finish at the North Central Invitational this Thursday.
Head coach Thomas Lawrence said the team has improved during their spring season.
“Spring season has been really well for us,” Lawrence said. “This last weekend we won down in Decatur at the Millikin invitational, and I think the girls are starting to realize that when we go to a tournament, we need to expect to play well; we need to expect to win. It was really fun to watch this weekend as they did just that.”
The Vikings finished first out of four this past weekend, trumping CCIW rivals Millikin and North Park. Part of their success is a motto they work with in order to get through every game in the right mindset.
“The biggest thing that we are learning, as well as to play to win, is to take one bite at a time,” Lawrence said. “In golf, it’s real easy to look behind you. You can’t worry about that. You have to focus on the plan ahead and execute it. That’s the one thing that has helped them take their skill to the next level.”
There are concerns for playing in a well-kept field for the North Central invitational.
“It’s a real nice golf course in the Chicagoland area, and so the greens will be much faster than what we’re used to,” Lawrence said. “That’s probably the one thing that concerns me the most; so we will try to do what we can to prepare ourselves for that.”
Since every golf course is different, Lawrence’s strategy focuses on memory and having the team point out significant details.
“I’m a big one on journaling; I like to have the girls journal after each round,” Lawrence said. “They can write down things about the course, or maybe it’s a certain hole that they ran into some problems that they need to stay away from. They’ll write that in there, and before we go play it again, we’ll talk about it as a team.”
Senior Caitlin Doherty is confident in how the team will perform for this upcoming invitational.
“We actually have had a lot of our underclassmen step up,” Doherty said. “We’re pretty heavy on the underclassman as we have three sophomores and five freshmen. They’ve stepped up in the fall, and this spring season has been really good for them. When we won our last tournament, they’ve provided us most of the low scores.”