The Kent State women’s golf team wrapped up the regular season on Sunday with an eighth-place finish at the Lady Buckeye Invitational.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t have our best stuff,” coach Casey VanDamme said. “Our best players struggled a little bit and that happens in golf sometimes, but that was kind of disappointing. They were disappointed in their finishes, that’s for sure.”

There were six teams ranked in the event on Golfstat’s Top-50 teams in the nation, with 14 teams competing overall.

KSU, the 40th-ranked team in the nation according to Golfstat, placed the lowest out of all ranked teams.

“The results are what they are, but we just didn’t play our best,” VanDamme said. “We didn’t finish as well as we’d like to. We obviously go into every event trying to win, and when you don’t do that, you look at all the reasons but also try to do the things that we can control and we didn’t do a very good job of that.”

Day 1

The first two rounds of the event were played on Saturday.

Three women ended the first day in the Top-25 of individual scores.

Junior Berta Sanchez shot a team-best one-over par (145), tying for 22.

Freshman Leon Takagi and junior Hester Sicking were not far behind, each shooting two-over par (146), both being tied for 25th at the end of day one competition.

The team finished the first day with a 10-over par (586) and was tied with Wisconsin for eighth place.

Day 2

The second day of the event played the third and final round.

Both Takagi and Sicking shot two-over par (74) in the last round, giving themselves the highest ranking of the Flashes’ players.

Both women shot four-over par (220) to end the day, ending with a tied-20th ranking for individual scores.

“Leon and Hester both had a great event,” VanDamme said. “They’re trending in a good direction – that’s for sure. There’s potential to have some big numbers and both of them avoided those big holes very well.”

Sanchez ended the day with an eight-over par (224), which put her in a tie for the 37th position on the individual score leaderboard.

The team stayed in eighth place at the end of the event, shooting 20-over par (884) as a team.

“They did a really good job handling the adversity and dealing with it,” VanDamme said. “Unfortunately, we created a little too much adversity for ourselves. They stuck to the game plan the best they could – they did a really good job at that as well.”

The team has placed in the Top-10 in all of its events, except for UNLV’s “The Show” event on Feb. 20, where the team placed 11th out of 15 teams.

Looking ahead

The next event for the team will be the Mid-American Conference Championships.

The championships will be held in Kalamazoo, Michigan,  starting Apr. 21 through Apr. 23.

“Going into the postseason is a fresh start,” VanDamme said. “We’re in a really good spot for that and have a good mentality getting ready to go play. The end of the season is a little bit different, so it’s about doing the little things and the things that we can control in preparation, and then enjoying the competition. That’s what we stress.”

Kent State has won every MAC Championship in women’s golf since the event’s inception in 1999.

They have won 23 consecutive conference championships and the team looks to add another this season.

Last season at the MAC Championship, the Flashes scored a 25-over par (889), and beat the second-place team, Northern Illinois, by 18 strokes.

VanDamme said that the team must be prepared for the “ever-changing weather” that may occur during the championship.

“The weather is going to go from 80 to 40 (degrees) and there may be snow and so we’re going to be prepared for it to be changing. We need to have everybody do everything they can on each shot. To make the best decision and trust what they’re doing – that’s the goal.”

John Hilber is a reporter. Contact him at [email protected]