Harvard Finishes Eighth at Hoya Invitational

Following the footsteps of an older, more presidential Harvard alumnus, the Crimson women’s golf team made a trip to the nation’s capital this week hoping for change from its not so distant past.

But, for Harvard, Washington wasn’t as receptive.

Greeted by warm and windy conditions, the team took to the The Members Club course at Four Streams Monday against 16 other universities, playing two rounds and falling short of its expectations, placing 8th out of 17. But, for the Crimson, there was still much to take from its performance.

“Everything’s there,” captain Mia Kabasakalis said. “We’ve been striking the ball well, putting pretty well, and excitement about the season is high; we’ve just got to put everything together.”

Coming off a string of disappointing results, the Hoya Invitational offered the Harvard squad a chance to redeem itself: to end the uncharacteristically slow start which left the Crimson with two losses against UC Berkeley and Rollins College in the spring, and no wins from its fall campaign.

“The Georgetown Invitational was a great test to see where we were and gauge our standing against other Ivies,” Harvard coach Kevin Rhoads said. “We had been moving in a good direction the last week or so, and this allowed us to finally play against people with the same weather we had this year.”

On Monday, all this talk was put to the test.

In the first round, Kabasakalis looked to lead by example, posting a 79, the best Crimson finish of the day, which was only seven over par and six more than the tournament’s lowest score. Kabasakalis also recorded an 82 in the day’s second round, ranking her 22nd out of 89 competitors with a score of 161.

Not too far behind, freshman standout Bonnie Hu also had a great day on the greens, finishing only one stroke behind her team captain, ending tied for 24th on the day. Although Hu got off to a slower start in the first round, taking 82 strokes to finish the course, her play improved in the second round as she shot an 80, giving her the second-best final tally, 162, for the Harvard team.

“If I look at individual scores and where they were, the best players in the tournament and even in the Ivy were within a couple shots of Bonnie and Mia,” Rhoads said. “They both played exceptionally well given the conditions.”

Fellow rookie Julie MacDonnell turned in one of her best performances of the season. Although it took MacDonnell 86 strokes to get through the first round, she improved to 83 in the second, finishing at 169, and 52nd among the 89 competitors present. MacDonnell excelled on par-four holes, averaging just 4.4 strokes per hole, tied for fifth best in the tournament.

The coaching staff was more than impressed with the effort.

“We were very excited that Julie qualified for the event, and proved that she can play at a top-five level in the tournament,” Rhoads said. “Her long game is incredibly solid, [and] her short game [is] also. It was a great accomplishment to watch.”

For the rest of the team, success was a bit harder to find. Junior Jane Lee, the Crimson’s most consistent golfer on the course, posted two 83-stroke finishes which landed her tied at 40th place. A mere one stroke back was fellow junior Christine Cho, who ended with an 83 and 84-stroke performance, good enough for 42nd overall.

With all their efforts combined, the five Harvard golfers amounted to 655 strokes on the day, tying fellow Ivy League team Columbia, and falling 32 strokes short of the day’s best golfers: Nova Southeastern University (623). Yet, even so, the Crimson still had a chance to change their standing a bit in the final round, set to be played the following day.

But, due to a rainy day in the District, the third and final round was canceled, and Harvard’s hopes of winning the tournament were dashed.

This weekend, the team will be taking its talent to the Spring Brown Bear Invitational in Barrington, R. I., to get another swing at success.

“We need to get sharper,” Rhoads said. “There’s a lot of our game that we’ll need to fine tune to make up ground on the other Ivies. The biggest thing though is all mental; it’s easy to be calm when you play well, but when you’re a little bit off, the skill to stay confident is necessary.”

“You can’t worry about the wind or any external factors,” Kabasakalis added. “We need to only worry about the factors we can control. I think that we were all a little bogged down on Monday, and that really threw us off.”