by Brandon Thompson
The Lady Aggie golf team began the fall tournament season at the Southwest Classic in Arlington, Texas.
The Lady Aggies suffered a couple of rough rounds, but women’s golf Head Coach Rick Goodwin is hopeful that the Aggies will make some improvements.
“I’m not real happy with the results,” Goodwin said. “We finished seventh out of nine teams.”
According to Coach Goodwin, the Aggies need to make improvements quickly in order to set themselves up for regional play in the spring.
“You have to get off to a good start to be competitive,” Goodwin said. “We want to make improvements every tournament during the fall; that should set us up for our championship segment in the spring.”
The Aggies troubles in the Southwest Classic can be attributed to inconsistent play and missing fairways according to Goodwin.
“It’s all about scoring and we have to be able to keep it in play and score,” Goodwin said. “At the golf course we just played at, there is a lot of trouble on every hole and a lot of native areas that you can’t play out of so there were a lot of penalty shots; those are things we are correcting.”
Goodwin said that the game of golf could be frustrating at times and requires a lot of hard work and self-discipline. He said that the girls on his team are willing to work to improve.
Goodwin noted that the loss of Kylee Johnson, last year’s number one, has taken a toll on the team ability to score.
“My number one player from last year, Kylee Johnson, is still recovering from knee surgery,” Goodwin said.
Goodwin said that at this point in the season his team is still searching for their unique identity and once found, the team would improve.
“Right now we are just trying to establish who we are,” Goodwin said. “We are going to build our way up.”
The Lady Aggies have two more tournaments before they finish the season at Ft. Sill. In that time, they will have the opportunity to build on a couple of the good rounds scored at the Southwest Classic.
Goodwin explained that there were opportunities for the Aggies to place higher if they had been more consistent.
According to Goodwin, the players know what they need to do to make the team successful.
“The girls need to play better,” Goodwin said. “They know that.”
Goodwin said that the girls would soon have another chance to go to the Dallas area and win. According to Goodwin, they will return to Dallas to play at a different tournament in a few weeks.
“In a few weeks we will go back down there and play at another golf course in Dallas,” Goodwin said.
The shortfall season will soon be over and the Aggies are looking ahead to the grueling six-tournament schedule of the spring.
If the Aggies can make the adjustments needed and recover from the injuries, the spring could be an exciting time for the young squad.