Women's golf travels to NCAA Regionals

With a forecast of partly cloudy skies and 80-degree weather, the women's golf team will take the Illinois State University Golf Course in Normal, Ill. by storm this week as it competes for the NCAA Central Regional title.

The Tigers will be one of 21 teams vying for top prize at the tournament. The top eight teams and top two individual finishers from non-qualifying teams will move on to the NCAA finals in Auburn, Ala. at the end of the month, where they will compete for the national title against the top-seeded teams from the East and West regions.

However, due to Princeton's success this season, it has found itself in the toughest division and the players will have to have their best rounds of the year if they hope to move on to nationals. The Central Regional tournament, which begins today, May 5, and lasts until May 8, includes the defending national champions, No. 10 University of Southern California.

No. 3 Vanderbilt and No. 4 University of New Mexico, along with No. 9 Arizona and No. 15 Oklahoma, will also be found out on the course swinging against the Tigers. Prior to the tournament, the NCAA Committee seeded the nation's top-15 teams and placed five of them in each region, so Princeton certainly will have its fair share of competition to deal with on its journey to triumph. The Tigers' last team appearance at Regionals was in the spring of 2001, when they were also sent to the Central Region and finished 20th in the pack of talented golfers. After losing in the Ivy League Championships last season, the team failed to qualify for Regionals. However, then-sophomore Avery Kiser, the Ivy League individual champion, did compete individually in the East Region.

The success of the 2003-2004 season, however, finds Princeton on a very different path than it was last year. After the season culminated with an Ivy League title, as well the third consecutive crowning of junior Avery Kiser as Ivy champ, the Tigers have earned a trip to Illinois where they will hope to put on a better performance than their 2001 showing.

Nevertheless, in order to achieve this goal, the team will have to rely on people other than Kiser to record low scores and few mistakes. Freshmen Sharla Cloutier and Alexis Etow, who have been swinging well for Princeton all season, will have to work on minimizing mistakes and optimizing consistency if they want to make their mark against the nation's top teams this week.

That is not to say, though, that the Tiger squad is young or inexperienced, for the talented freshmen will be led by Kiser and her fellow junior veterans Meg Nakamura and Taryn Haladay, who have also been having strong seasons. Haladay, in particular, has stepped up her game this spring. Her scores are by far the lowest she has shot in her Princeton career.

After a couple of disappointing finishes at the very end of the season, including a one-stroke loss to traditional rival Yale, Princeton was put to the test and rallied back to win the Ivy League team and individual titles, silencing the naysayers and giving the squad an extra boost of much-needed confidence going into Regionals.

Yet even though the team managed to pick up the intensity recently at Ivies, the players will have to be on par, both literally and figuratively, this week if they want to come out successful. At this level of collegiate golf, a squad cannot rely on one or two standout players — everyone must pull her own weight. Moreover, the increasing popularity of the sport among America's youth has improved the quality of play across the board.

Though a trip to the NCAA finals would be the ideal goal for Princeton, the Tigers' primary aim is to play the best golf that they can and, with any luck, edge out the competition one swing at a time.