On Saturday, March 2, the men’s and women’s golf teams started their spring seasons by competing in the Music City Shootout in Joelton, Tenn. The men’s team finished in sixth place, while the women’s team finished in fourth.
At the Music City Shootout, senior Avery Frick finished second out of 82 golfers, while junior Kelsey O’Connor claimed another top 20 finish for the women’s team, finishing in 16th place overall. On the men’s side, junior Sam Evenson finished the invitational tied for ninth place after leading round one. First-Year Alexandre Thery finished in 12th place.
“I was pretty nervous the first day, but then I started settling in,” Evenson said. “The second day, I was pretty happy with my performance through the first 10 holes as I started, and I forgot all the bad shots and just focused on every individual shot.”
The women’s team finished their fall season by competing in the CCIW championship, where they placed second. However, the CCIW championship for the men’s team is at the end of the spring season, so the spring season has a little more pressure on it.
O’Connor said there is a clear difference between the feelings of the fall and spring seasons.
“The spring season is more relaxed because you don’t have the pressure of conference at the end of it. But that doesn’t change the fact that we still want to do good,” O’Connor said. “We have five tournaments in the spring, but less pressure coming out of the winter after not playing outside.”
The next time the women’s team will compete is the Washington University Invitational during the weekend of April 6 in Crescent, Mo. The roughly 33-day period between the competitions is a little unusual and forces the players to try to keep their focus while not overworking themselves.
“We got back in the swing of things and now will have to stop before that next invitational,” Frick said. “I’m probably going to have the same feeling of ‘I can’t play golf.’ It feels weird to have this big of a break.”
The men’s team’s next opportunity to compete will be at the Illinois Central College Spring Invitational on the weekend of March 23 in Peoria, Ill. Augie Director of Golf Tom Lawrence knows that even though the team doesn’t have a long wait, they must keep improving.
“You have to keep going outside and work on the putting greens. We’ve got a lot of guys who are battling for those top 10 spots,” Lawrence said. “We have several 18-hole inter-squad matches where everyone will get a score at the end. We’ll take our best 10 guys and go down to Peoria.”
Both men’s and women’s teams will host the Viking Invitational on the weekend of April 26 at Highland Springs Golf Course in Rock Island, Ill. Despite this being the final competition of the women’s season, the men’s spring season will finish with the CCIW Championship. Having the final invitational at home means a lot to the team, who see the seniors compete at home for the last time.
“It’s special for the seniors,” O’Connor said. “This year, we have one senior, Avery, for the women’s team. It’s fun to end where we have been practicing all these years here. I also think it’s a fun tournament because I like the Highland Springs course a lot, and we usually do pretty well there. So it’s a good tournament to end off.”