With the spring golf season reaching its final stretch, the women’s golf team hopes to make good on one of their biggest goals this year: winning the conference championship.
In order to do so they will need to win their last two matches, concluding with the NCAC Invitational, May 2-3.
“The team is much better from my freshman year and we have improved greatly this season as well,” junior Ally Lichwa said.
Sophomore Ashley Saylor added that everyone has been working hard and is striving to improve with each match.
“We’ve worked on becoming confident in ourselves and while statistically none of the matches count more than any others,” she said.
“We are even more excited for our upcoming home tournament and conferences.”
Though snow caused the cancellation of the March 30 Swing Fore The Cure event, there are still three invitationals left in the season.
From April 12-13 the team will host its home tournament, the Lauren Bump Invitational, and April 26-27 they will travel to Indiana for the DePauw Invitational, which serves as the first weekend of conference play.
While Saylor expressed a strong team desire to represent well as tournament hosts, their main focus is on trying to win the NCAC.
Their final opportunity to do so comes at the NCAC Invitational, where the winners will be crowned as conference champions.
Conference play is split into two weekends, with all four counting towards crowning a champion.
The overall first place team and first place individual qualify for the national tournament.
According to Saylor, though they have never won the conference championship, they won a tournament in the fall which was their first ever number one finish.
“All in all, I’m happy to see that our program is growing and I can’t wait to see how it is when I’m a senior and after I graduate,” said sophomore Amy Greenwood.
Lichwa said winning at conference is something that she takes pride in trying to achieve.
She added she wants to show the campus that the team can do it, and pointed to their yearlong improvement as a positive step.
Greenwood elaborated further, saying “I feel like our team has a lot of potential this year and I feel like we’re going to surprise a lot of people with how we finish.”
Greenwood said the NCAC is very competitive, and winning would be a big deal to everyone on the team.
Saylor added that this year’s team has already become a part of OWU history, and that she hopes the hard work put in will put them in the school records again.