The women’s golf team reaped the rewards of a hard week of practice at the Price New Mexico State University Invitational this week.
The team finished ninth overall with junior Annika Afoa Kahaiali’i finishing in the top 25.
“I think (practice) helped a lot,” Kahaiali’i said. “Mainly on our confidence in ourselves and confidence in our game. The drills that we’ve been doing helped us prepare for now, and I think we’re getting better every tournament that we play in.”
New and different drills at practice gave the Cougars an ambitious spirit this week.
“I think it prepared them competitively,” BYU Coach Carrie Roberts said. “We did a lot of competitions so it helped them get the feeling of what it means to be competitive and helped them to focus better in the heat of competition. I think that helped us a lot.”
Junior Selu Fotu was able to get a personal best in round one of the tournament, and the team as a whole did their best in round two.
“My first round was my personal best so far at BYU,” Fotu said. “I was really happy with that. Although, as a team we had our personal best round of 297 so everyone’s really excited, it’s really fun to be a part of.”
The Cougars shot a 303 the first round and a 297 the second round setting an exciting stage for round three as they had so far met their team goal of averaging a 306 or better each round.
“We felt really good,” Fotu said. “We were all really excited to go out and play today. I think this is the best we’ve felt all year and we were really excited.”
The Cougars finished off day three with a score of 301.
It may not have been the finish they were looking for, but the Cougars are proud of their accomplishments and ready to prepare for their next tournament.
“I think we all need to work on being confident within ourselves,” Kahaiali’i said. “Even though we didn’t finish how we wanted to I think we still need to be confident. We pretty much came out here and completed our goal, so I think we need to stay confident even though we didn’t play as well today.”
Roberts said the team’s concentration and focus has improved, but needs to improve its consistency.
“We’ve got to score better, we just have a few too big of numbers that get us, so we’ve just got to be more consistent with our game,” Roberts said.
The Cougars travel to Hawaii next for the Rainbow Wahine Invitational Oct. 30-31.
