BYU women’s golf was not able to finish the season strong at the Nanea Invitational on Oct. 28-30 in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, at Nanea Golf Club.
Coming into the tournament, the Cougars had a streak of three straight top four finishes. The Branch Law Firm/McGuire Invitational, their first tournament of the season, still featured them in the top six.
Out of a pool of 11 teams, BYU placed just 10th overall. It carded a 298-298-308-904 score which is 28-over par. It came in as the fifth best nationally ranked team among their competitors at No. 41. They never gave themselves much of a chance in each round as they wound up being tied for ninth after round one and then tied for seventh after round two before a drastic 16-over par third round. This performance forced them to drop five spots in the national rankings to No. 46 going into the offseason.
It still would have been an extremely tall task for the Cougars to surpass some of these teams. Three of the four teams ranked ahead of them are inside the top-10 including No. 1 Stanford who played the course like it’s their own backyard with an immaculate 26-under par placement. No. 8 Arizona State with 17-under par and No. 6 Texas with 12-under par were the only schools outside of Stanford to score under par for the tournament.
BYU can hang their hat on a remarkable season from the rising sophomore Maria Jose “MJ” Barragan who finished as the top Cougar. She continues to show flashes of superstardom on the links as she tied for 20th in the tournament carding a 73-72-76-221 score at two-over par. She was one of four players to get an eagle with it being a hole-in-one on the first day on hole eight. Impressively, she never finished outside the top-20 this fall. She placed top-15 four times, top-10 three times, and top three once.
The rest of the lineup for the Cougars featured junior Subin Seo, senior Alexa Udom, junior Lily McCauley, and freshman Kanyanol (Naji) Aramkul.
Udom led the team in birdies with 10 for the tournament. However, her carded score of 74-75-82-231 at 12-over par only nabbed her a tie for 44th. Leading the team in bogeys with 17 and double bogeys with three did not help her cause in an overall inconsistent showing.
Seo was the second best Cougar tying for 31st with a hat trick of three-over pars (75-75-75-225). McCauley and Aramkul followed up with a 49th and 50th place finishes respectively. McCauley’s score was 76-77-80-233 at 14-over par, and Aramkul scored 81-76-77-234 at 15-over par for the tournament.
BYU has now wrapped up their fall season and will dive into the offseason looking forward to the FAU Paradise Invitational in Boca Raton, Florida which will tee off Feb. 3.