Campus Spotlight: Women's Golf

Ken Kohl (5:33 pm)

[Ed. Note] Believe it or not, there are other sports at The Ohio State University besides football and basketball. In our new feature, Campus Spotlight, we will periodically catch you up with what is happening with those sports. 

Since my last brilliant idea had about as much merit as my first marriage, I think I’ll gravitate to a non-revenue sport where I have some familiarity; golf. In this case, women’s golf. 

Here’s a brief biography of the two coaches for Ohio State’s Women’s Golf Team and a recap of the 2011 Fall Season. Future articles will highlight the roster and upcoming matches in the Spring 2012 Season with their recaps. 

Coaching Profiles:

Therese Hession

Head coach Therese Hession is in her 20th year as HC of the Ohio State women's golf program. Over her tenure, Coach Hession’s Buckeyes have won seven Big Ten championships, including four of the last nine, and 11 NCAA championship appearances. [Ed: That’s pretty good stuff.]  Her squads have also competed in 17 NCAA regionals the past 19 years, including the last 16 in a row. For her efforts and impressive results, Hession has been named Big Ten Coach of the Year six times (1993, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2003 and 2005). So, bringing home CoY 6 times in 19 years is pretty good; remember, there are other teams in the conference!

Coach Hession competed in more than 250 LPGA tournaments during her 11 year career. This kind of successful experience is important to teach her players how to approach and deal with travel requirements and tournament pressures. This may help explain why her teams have been consistently successful for such a long period. Of course, she can’t do this alone, so I’d like to introduce...

Lisa Strom

Lisa Strom golfed for four years at Ohio State, and accumulated 10 years of professional golf experience on the LPGA tour as well as teaching the sport. While on tour, she competed in more than 50 tour events. Lisa joined the staff in 2011 as assistant coach. 

Note: for full biographies: www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com 
 
2011 Fall Season Results

The format is play five-score four. For each day’s round, the lowest four scores of each team’s five participants are counted towards team total. So, over the course of a 3-day event, a player has the opportunity to “shoot” her way out of a slump. All events consist of three rounds. 

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Date /Opponent / Event Location /Time

09/16-17/11 Mary Fossum Invitational  East Lansing, Mich. 2nd of 12

We finished 15 strokes off the pace, won by Michigan State. As you can guess from the location, this is Michigan State’s home course. In  fact, MSU has won this event 6 of the last 7 years. Notre Dame won  this event in 2010, but wasn’t invited back for 2011. I’m just sayin’.

10/03-04/11 Windy City Invitational Chicago, Ill. 3rd of 15

We finished 1 stroke out of 2nd place and 2 strokes off the lead.. Oh, if a couple more putts would have dropped. This event is noteworthy because all five of the Lady Buckeyes shot all their rounds in the 70’s.  That’s pretty good team play.

10/10-11/11 Lady Northern Invitational French Lick, Ind. 2nd of 12

We finished 5 strokes off the pace in the tourney, losing to UCF. In  fact, after 2 rounds, we had a pretty sizable lead, but UCF absolutely blitzed the course in the 3rd round, while our score was pretty meh.  Think of the golf team’s 3rd round along the lines of football’s 2nd half at Nebraska or men’s BB getting “Brandon Paul’d”.

10/28-30/11 Landfall Tradition (Round 1) Wilmington, N.C. 3rd of 18

This was the last of the Fall 2011 events. We finished 1 stroke out of  2nd place (Auburn) and 15 strokes out of the lead. This was an  interesting tourney; pretty solid 1st round scores, a lot of wilderness-roaming in the 2nd round (except for the winning team, Purdue) and a  dogfight in the 3rd round. In fact going into the 3rd round Ohio State was one of five teams within two strokes of each other. The "good  guys", or "gal"’ in this case learned from their 3rd round meh in the previous tourney, shot a smooth team 300 and earned 3rd place.