After a successful fall 2022 golf season, Western Michigan University's women team will start it's spring season on Monday and Tuesday with the Falcon Florida Classic at Lakewood Ranch, Fla.
However…..
Lurking in the back of the minds of the eight players and two coaches on the Broncos' squad is a little trip to Hawaii during Spring Break the first week in March, a trip made possible by the play of head coach Kim Moore plus a lot of hard work by the team at a fundraising golf outing.
''I won't believe it's real until we land,'' graduate student Alissa Fish said with a huge smile.
Added senior transfer Natalie Samdal, ''This is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience, that's for sure.''
The six-day trip all started because another Spring Break trip fell through. Western Michigan had played in a Florida tournament hosted by Butler last year, but it wasn't hosting the tournament this year.
''I tried to get into some other tournaments, but they were already full and it's always good to play during break because you don't have school and it's a good opportunity to play,'' Moore said. ''I found that Hawaii was hosting a tournament and we could get in.''
Raising money was going to be huge, though. That's where Moore's play came in. She was invited to play in the four-hole Celebrity Shootout at The Ally Challenge at Warwick Hills in Grand Blanc. The Challenge is a PGA TOUR Champions tournament. Moore was coming off winning the U.S. Adaptive Open Championship. She was paired with Super Middleweight boxing world champion Anthony Dirrell and country/western singer and award winner Kane Brown. They played against Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin, former Michigan State basketball great Charlie Bell and former Michigan basketball standout Jalen Rose. Jack Nicklaus played for both teams.
Moore's team won and she donated her part of the purse toward the Hawaii trip. The Broncos then had a good fundraising golf tournament in the summer, too, which put them in the Dr. Donnis Thompson Invitational at Hoakalei Country Club at Ewa Beach on Oahu.
''The nice part is that all eight members of the team and the coaching staff are able to go,'' Moore said. ''We will have a practice round on Sunday (March 5), then 36-holes on the first day of the tournament (March 6) and 18 holes the second day (March 7).
''Then we will do an excursion before flying back home.''
The team members are returners Fish, senior Haley Barclay, sophomores Ally Barth and Madeline Blum and newcomers Samdal and freshmen Jenna Hayes, Megha Vallabhaneni and Kailey White. Moore is the head coach and Tracy Daniel, who is the only Western Michigan female athlete to play on Mid-American Conference championships in two different sports, volleyball in 1982 and softball in 1986, is the assistant coach.
The Broncos will play in six invitationals this spring before hosting the MAC Championship on April 21-23 at the Kalamazoo Country Club. They will go against many MAC teams in those invitationals, especially the first one which will feature all the MAC schools except for defending champion Kent State, which is currently ranked 20th in the nation by Golfstat and 21st by the Women's Golf Coaches Association.
''The MAC is going to be tough again this season,'' Moore said. ''It will be good to see the conference teams, because after the fall tournaments the scores could be different.
''You can't tell a whole lot from the beginning of the spring season, but it's good to see them play to compare and compete against them.''
After finishing in a tie for second place in one fall tournament and in third in two other tournaments, the first time that's happened since Moore became head coach in Nov. 2020, Western Michigan is looking to make more advancements this spring. With four of the eight team members being new this year, Moore wasn't sure what to expect last fall, though.
''For the three freshmen, it's a lot different playing high school golf and then coming to college golf,'' Moore said. ''In the fall, I was just happy with what we did because our scoring average was six strokes better than in the fall of 2021.
''We set team goals for last fall and this spring. One of our fall goals was to have a 3.6 team grade-point-average and we ended up at 3.9. We were looking to win a couple of tournaments, which we didn't do, but we broke 300 twice for a team score, which we didn't do at all the previous year. In the second round of the Ball State tournament, we shot a 290 which is our second lowest team score ever.''
Western Michigan accomplished that feat without Fish, its best player, who had a little hiccup during team qualifying. Moore has qualifying play before each invitational with the top five making the tourney and the top four scores counting toward the team total.
"I had two bad qualifying rounds and it cost me a tournament,'' Fish said. ''That's the first time that has happened in my career.
''I went home for the weekend and the next two days (she has online classes and a 4.0 GPA) and I played golf for a lot of hours and worked out for a lot of hours, so I felt I had something to prove after that. Golf can humble you a bit and sometimes you need a reality check.''
At Ball State, Barth led the team with a three-round total of 220. Samdal was next at 224, Barclay at 225, Vallabhenani at 226 and White at 230.
Fish came back to tie for first, but lose in a playoff, in the next tournament, shooting a personal best 4-under 68 in one of the rounds. WMU tied for second as a team. In her two fall tournaments, Fish's scoring average is a crisp 73.20. In the three tourneys, Vallabhaneni is at 75.63 and Samdal is at 76.0.
''We have a lot of young talent and I think that's what our program needed,'' Fish said. ''I think seeing our coach's success this summer is really good and is motivating us.''
One of the things which convinced Samdal to transfer to Western Michigan was the team atmosphere.
''The team aspect being built here is really outstanding, especially because golf is such an individual sport,'' she said. ''We compete with each other, but ultimately, we support each other and that's huge at any school.
''When I transferred here, that was something I was looking for, not only just being able to push each other, but be genuinely excited when someone else travels over you, if someone is struggling and then they finally pick it up in a qualifier. It's an awesome experience.''
The Broncos are also looking for a good experience at this season's MAC Championships. Last season, WMU finished ninth.
''I think we have a lot of momentum coming off the fall and we are heading in the right direction, we have the right people, the right skills and talent to perform,'' Fish, the team's captain, said. ''We just have to put it all together in one place.''
The MAC Championships, and Hawaii, would be nice.
