Golf team takes second at LPGA International
10/10/2010 12:00:00 AM | Golf
The University of Montana women???s golf team carded a round of 298 in Sunday???s final of the LPGA International Xavier Invitational. ??Tying for the third-best all-time UM single round score, the final also punctuated a 54-hole total of 907 that was third-best in school history.
After falling from a first round lead with an incredible home course effort by Daytona State in the second round, the Grizzlies needed to finish consistently in order to secure a second-place finish over hard-charging tournament host Xavier. The Grizzlies would shoot the lowest round of the day, doing so in two of three 18-hole rounds for the tournament. ??
Daytona State took the tournament title with a score of 894, vaulted by the performance of No. 4 Mitsuki Katahira, who shot six under par, eight strokes ahead of the next competitor. Xavier held on for third with 915.
The 54-hole effort was the first time the Grizzlies placed all 12 individual scoring rounds below 80 in an event since September of 2009. For their efforts, Grizzlies Lauren Howell and Carissa Simmons finished fourth and tied for fifth respectively.
The tournament marks the final fall event for Simmons as a Grizzly, she said, ???It???s always nice to bring home hardware from an event. Our strength as a team comes from a depth that we have not known before. When I was in my first few years at UM, it was questionable whether we could show up as a team in competition. With the fact that every member of our team now has the ability to shoot rounds in the low-70s, it alleviates the pressure on a few individuals to carry the load.???
In Daytona, senior Rose Stepanek and sophomore Olivia Weber tied for 42nd overall. Both athletes would experience rounds over 80, only to rebound with mid-70 results in the following round. Simmons said, ???Olivia went out there today and shot 17 holes of par with a single bogey. That kind of consistency makes for some really good golf.???
15th year UM coach Joanne Steele said, ???We didn???t have a lot of birdies today. There was nothing flashy about how we played. The girls just hit a lot of greens and two-putted for par. Steady was what we needed to maintain our place.
???What stood out for the team in this event was the great attitude that everyone showed, not just for their own game, but toward the group as a whole. The players really encourage one-another and then fight that much harder to perform for the team. Rose and Olivia both came back to fight through, getting some results that were pivotal in the team???s success. I saw Carissa (Simmons) constantly reaffirming the quality of her teammates. Every one of them does this. When you have people believing in you like that, you can???t help but believe in yourself.???
With the performance Sunday, Montana is likely to improve upon a week???s-end Golfstat head-to-head rating of 123. The Grizzlies had jumped last week, from a consistent standing in the 150s to 114, just two spots behind Big Sky leader Northern Arizona. Steele doesn???t make too much of the ranking, saying, ???It is likely that they will see our result here and it would be nice to get into the top 100 teams. That???s not our focus. What we want is just to play the best that we can in each round. A high ranking is not what we need, it???s those scores of 299-300 that will win us a Big Sky championship.???
Simmons said, ???This is a great way to end the fall schedule. It tells us that we know that we can do it, and that our goals are not set too high. Now we just have to take a little brake and then we will start off in the spring with the knowledge that we should be on the podium of every tournament that we enter.??? ??????
