For years, expectations for William and Mary women’s golf have been pretty low. But the success of the past two seasons, in which the Tribe has posted consecutive 100-win seasons the first time in the school’s history, has the College aiming for its first CAA Championship this season.
“We have a really good team this year and we have a bunch of really talented girls,” freshman Emily Gimpel said. “We are going to try to do well in the CAAs.”
The Tribe started the year off strong at the Bucknell Invitational, placing second out of 18 teams. Leading the way was sophomore Bethany Birchall who was named CAA Golfer of the Week. Birchall finished 4th shooting 224 (+14) for the tournament.
Gimpel, one of the plethora of talented freshman on the Tribe this season, shined her collegiate debut, shooting 226 (+16) and finishing 5th.
“I was really proud of us for our first tournament. I think we all thought we could have each played a little bit better,” Gimpel said. “But it was definitely exciting starting off the season well and hopefully we will keep getting better.”
Gimpel and Birchall were supported by junior Caroline Sweet, who shot 237 (+27) to tie a 24th. The College also was helped out by senior Sarah Whitney 238 (+28) who finished 26th position and junior Kristen Hamel, who shot a 239 (+29) to finish 28th.
Birchall’s fourth-place finish her fantastic freshman campaign last year in which she shot an average of 78.88, a score only a little bettered by Gimpel’s average score of 75.3 a round at the Invitational.
“I’m a freshman so I just really want to play well,” Gimpel said. “My first goal when I got here was to get into the tournaments and I played in the first one, now I’m playing the second one so now I just want to go out there and feel like I’m playing well.”
Low scores from Gimpel and Birchall, along with veteran leadership from juniors and seniors should allow the Tribe to perform well and challenge for the CAA Championship this year.
“I’m really excited just to play teams in our conference just to show them how good we really are and hopefully we will beat them,” Gimpel said.
