Golf closed out the fall season with a bang, as both teams won the Alamo City Classic this past Monday and Tuesday. Coming into this early week showdown, each team had experienced a good amount of success in prior tournaments. It finally came together in a victory, and gives all the more reason to look forward to the spring season.
Both teams competed in a six school field of competition against familiar conference opponents, including Schreiner University, Southwestern and Texas Lutheran University. At the end of the first day of play, the men’s team was in third place, optimistic about their chances of coming from behind to pull out the win. Day two saw a huge improvement as they were able to shoot 19 strokes lower than their day one score. Seeing as five different players finished in the top 15 of individual scoring, it is clear that this tournament victory was a team effort. Senior captain Redmond Lyons was one of these five, finishing ninth overall in the tournament. Lyons was ecstatic about how they were able to finish the season with a win, and looks forward to training well in the offseason so they can pick up where they left off.
“I think there are a lot of good takeaways from this win. A couple of guys went under par and had some great scores. So I think we’ve proved what we’ve felt for a while, which is that we are capable of big wins and great team scores,” Lyons said. “Outside the starting five, there were a lot of positives too. Some of our younger freshmen came out and had great rounds and I think that second group really proved how deep of a team we are.”
In the end, the Tiger men were able to come back after being behind three strokes to win by five strokes over second place TLU.
The Tiger women finished the first day of the Classic already in the top spot, and were able to sustain it that way until the triumphant end. Through day one, the women’s team had seven players within the top 13, and leading the way was sophomore Emilee Strausberg. After round one, she sat three strokes behind the leader of the tournament, shooting four over par with a score of 75.
“It was really fun that both the men and the women won, and it showed that our hard work really paid off at our home tournament. That was really cool that we were able to finish the season with a win. We have a lot to work on for the spring, and that is really our main season. The spring has the national tournament, better competitions, and more of them. Although, it was nice to get our rankings up this fall and build some momentum going into the spring,” Strausberg said.
The Trinity women’s team came into this tournament ranked 17th, which is sure to improve after this big win. After day one, they were able to cruise to a commanding lead over the course of that second day. Senior Shelby Devore also had a great showing at the Classic, finishing tied for fourth with Emilee Strausberg. Devore really feels that the confidence built off this tournament will serve them well going into the spring season.
“We proved to ourselves that we can compete and we can win. This tournament really built our confidence up going into the off season. We know what we need to work out so now we can focus on perfecting those things for the spring. There was good competition out there this week. They were great competitors, but each girl on our team played well and came out and gave it their all,” Devore said.
The Trinity women finished 22 strokes ahead, a dominant win. Be ready for another Tiger golf season when they resume play this spring.
