The University of Idaho women’s golf team went to the Big Sky Championship in Molalla, Oregon, last week. The team came in fourth against 10 other teams, taking 922 points total with five players across 54 holes.
This resulted in the team scoring 58 over par for the entire competition, which is a small loss from their last competition where the team got 918 points and 54 over par on a different set of 54 holes.
In the championship, each of the five golfers played 54 total holes separated across three 18-hole days. Each day, the players were individually ranked against the 54 other total players in the championship.
The best players for the Vandals at the end turned out to be graduate student Laura Gerner and senior Valeria Patino, with Gerner scoring 223 points and Patino scoring 225 points. With these results, Gerner earned a three-way tie for second place in the entire competition, losing out to Sacramento State’s freshman Tess Blair with a score of 215 shots. Patino earned a two-way tie for eighth place, placing well enough to tie against the top scorer for Eastern Washington University, junior Jaelin Ishikawa.
The third and fourth place scorers for the Vandals, junior Vicky Tsai and junior Eddie Hsu, both scored a 238-stroke game, earning them a two-way tie with each other. Rounding out the back of the scores was graduate student Jaime Bellingham, who scored a 248 and earned 45th place.
This tournament was an overall point increase from last, with the team going 58 over par, compared to the Wyoming Cowgirl Classic earlier this month where they went 54-over.
However, multiple players have improved their individual play from the last tournament, and it shows in the stats. Gerner, who was expected to place fourth among her teammates, improved her game by six strokes and overtook Patino, who was expected to place first. Gerner bumped up her score the most, but Patino improved as well and took a stroke off her game.
The rest of the team, however, added a significant number of strokes to their game. Tsai and Hsu both gained eight strokes over the course of three days compared to their last tournament. Bellingham gained 15 strokes from her last tournament.
This disparity is rather large compared to nearly every other team who went to both the Cowgirl Invitational and the Big Sky Tournament, rivaled only by players such as Montana State’s junior Sofia Todd, who gained 18 strokes from the Cowgirl Invitational to the Big Sky Championship.
None of the Vandal sophomores attended the Big Sky Championship, and there are no freshmen on the team.
Dylan Shepler can be reached at [email protected]