The Ball State University women's golf team finished a good season on Sunday with a disappointing sixth place finish out of nine Mid-American Conference teams at the league championship.
The team was ranked third in the MAC by national rankings heading into the event in Nashport, Ohio. Kent State University, the 18th ranked team in the nation, won the tournament with a 39 stroke lead to second place Eastern Michigan University.
The final team score for Ball State was a 1,313, which was an average round score of 328, which is high for the Cardinals. Winds of 25 to 30 miles per hour in the first three rounds forced inflated scores for the entire field. Only on the last day did the winds die down, and the Cardinals were able to shoot their tournament best score of a 317.
Where some might point to a young and inexperienced team, coach Katherine Mowat refused to let that be an excuse.
"All of our players have played in pressure situations before and have come out on top," Mowat said. "They have been there before."
The Cardinals sent one junior, two sophomores and a freshman into the tournament with one senior, Sarah Windlan.
Sophomore Brittany Kelly was the lone top 15 finisher in a field of 45, finishing in 11th with a four-round score of 321. She also was named as a Second Team all-conference performer.
With the end of the golf season, the Cardinals will now turn their attention to their studying.
"The focus of the players right now is academics for the next few weeks," Mowat said. "We have a very strong academic team. They will meet individually later and sum up individual performance plans and set expectations for the fall."
If there is a silver lining to the end of the season, it is that the top four scorers for the Cardinals will all return next year.
The Cardinals close out the year having won three tournaments this season - the Ball State Cardinal Classic, the Iowa Hawkeye Invitational and the Eastern Kentucky El Diablo Invitational. They also had four top five finishes outside of their wins, giving them seven top five finishes in 11 total tournaments.
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