Women's golf team takes home first tournament victory in program's second year

The women's golf team won its first tournament in program history in the Homewood Suites Siena Invitational this past week­end.

In only its second year of ex­istence, the team won the tourna­ment after coming in second, four strokes behind at the Lehigh In­vitational, to end the fall season. The team won by 32 strokes, led by freshman Mckenzie Cutter, who finished second with a final score of 6-over-par.

Sophomores Hannah Basa­lone and Christina Cantu added third and fifth place finishes for the Hall while freshman Erin Mc­Clure finished in a tie for seventh.

Head coach Sara Doell was at a loss for words on how to de­scribe finally getting the team's first win.

"It was just so rewarding," Doell said. "We've played really well up till now, and from last year to this year we've obviously made great improvements."

The Hall started the tourna­ment off tying the program's record for best first round score with a 305.

Basalone led the way with a 73 in the first round, while Cutter shot a 75 to lead the Pirates. As a team, their second-round score was 310.

During the second round Cut­ter was focused on getting her scores down in practice before the tournament.

"I worked really hard over break to try to get my scores down and focus on things I didn't do so well in the fall," Cutter said

Throughout the tournament, Doell kept the team focused on the objective, telling them not to get ahead of themselves.

"I talked to the girls before the second round," Doell said. "We had an 18 shot lead, but I didn't talk about score at all, I didn't talk about results at all. I talked about the process, and I think that's what [the key] is, staying with the process."

Moving forward, Cutter said she just needs to make minor ad­justments to get a first place fin­ish. Doell said one of the keys for Cutter's improvement is keeping an even tempo and not rushing late in rounds.

"She bogeyed the last three holes to shoot 75 [in the first round], and her and I had a talk about how [to improve]," Drell. "I told her that on those last three holes she was playing, she was really fast. Her swing, her walk, everything. So we talked about, for the next day that I wanted her to be really aware of that towards the end of her round, 'cause that's what she does, she gets either re­ally excited or she gets kind of fear and she doesn't want to let it go, so that gets her fast,"

The next tournament is the University of Cincinnati Spring Invitational. The tournament goes from March 23-25.

Brandon Biskobing can be reached at brandon.biskobing@student.shu.edu.