We're Back!!

After a long absence due to craziness in Lady Vol golf land, I am back and will post regularly (promise)!  Over the summer we had an assistant coaching change, a player change and still needed 3 players for the class of 2013.  After some hard work I checked off those three items,  only to find ourselves needing to replace a player this winter!  After more hard work, great luck and a minor miracle, we landed not one but two new players for this spring! 

We have had a good winter break and are now starting qualifying for our first spring tournament. We leave two weeks from today!  So far the scores are GOOD - so proud of the players for being ready to go!

Here is our spring schedule. It's a super competitive one!  All 4 regular season events are ranked in the 10 best fields of the spring.

February 15-17   Match Up Invitational
                             Tallahassee, FL

March 8-10         Darius Rucker Intercollegiate
                             Hilton Head, SC

March 22-24      LSU Invitational
                            Baton Rouge, LA

March 29-31     Bryan National Collegiate
                           Greensboro, NC


I hope you'll check back regularly to follow our program this spring!

Erica Popson to represent Team USA in Curtis Cup!

This weekend, June 8-10, Erica Popson will represent the USA as part of the Curtis Cup team.  She is in Scotland

now with team preparing for the matches.  Erica was selected to the team in January and is very excited about the opportunity!  Follow the Curtis Cup matches at http://www.curtiscup.org/. 

 Click here to see an interview with Erica posted on USGA.org

Lady Vols Finish 19th at NCAA, End the Season Ranked 15th

After a cookout that included lots of s'mores, we headed a short way west on I-40 to Nashville to compete at the NCAA Championship looking for big things!  While we didn't quite come away with the finish we wanted, we did post a final round 286 (-2) to end the season. It was a good way to finish the year and keep us believing in our team for next season!  Vanderbilt did a great job hosting and even treated us to a private concert by Vince Gill to start the week!  



Team Awards Banquet

We held our annual team awards banquet at Gettysvue Country Club to celebrate the season!  Winners of the awards were:

Player of the Year - Erica Popson
Carrie Cole Effort Award - AJ Newell
Weight Room Award - Sara Monberg
Team Before Self - Sara Monberg

Senior (Gift and Ring) - Nathalie Mansson
Junior (Watches) - Erica Popson, Sara Monberg
Sophomore (Jackets) - Chessey Thomas, Kaitlyn Rohrback
Freshman (Blanket) - AJ Newell

4th at Regionals, NCAA Bound for the 8th time in 9 years!

We were selected as the 5th seed in the Central Regional hosted by Ohio State.  We have played the Scarlet Course before and it's TOUGH!  Since we have a team of long hitters and good ball strikers, I thought it would be perfect for us.  We didn't breeze through by any means, but had a great final round of 290 to secure 4th place and our 4th consecutive trip to the NCAA Championship - the 8th in the past 9 seasons.  On to Nationals at Vanderbilt!

Lady Vols WIN!!

 After two days at home, we boarded another flight, this time for Baton Rouge to compete in the LSU Invitational.  We arrived without incident and woke up bright and early for a 7am practice round.  We played the course last year, so we had a good productive practice round and got a good feel for the course.  We played 3 solid rounds of golf and came away with the VICTORY!  We were tied with LSU with just a couple holes to play, and our girls finished strong and it made all the difference, we ended up beating them by 2.  Erica Popson won again too!  She shot 75-70-69 to earn co-medalist honors with Catherine O'Donnel of UNC.  We had four players finish in the top 10:  Erica - 1st, Nathalie - 7th, AJ and Sara - 10th.  In addition, Kaitlyn posted another top 20 finishing 16th.

On Friday night, our host family, the Bartons, had us over for some Mexican food, crawfish and gator - yummm!

Spring Season Underway!

Finally, after about 6 weeks of practice, we played in our first tournament! We traveled to Hilton Head to compete in the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate hosted by South Carolina.  After some flight adventures along the way we all arrived safely and were excited to get started!  We played at Long Cove Club which was a very nice golf course!  Unfortunately it was a little intimidating off the tee and we let that get the best of us and finished 9th.  But a bright spot was Kaitlyn Rohrback who finished 16th individually.

The tournament was awesome even though we didn't play the way we wanted to! We all stayed together in an amazing house in Sea Pines right on the ocean. We got some great gifts, the food was awesome and we had a bunch of great fans from Knoxville who cheered us on! Oh, I almost forgot the best part, a PRIVATE concert for the teams by Darius Rucker!

Erica Popson Selected to Curtis Cup Team!

Erica Popson was contacted last week by the USGA with the news that she will be representing the United States in the Curtis Cup this summer in Scotland.  We have never had a player selected to the Curtis Cup, so this is big news for Lady Vol Golf!  Click here to view a video of our interview about her selection.  She is off to Palm Springs today to meet her teammates and start planning their strategy for June.

We have had numerous players represent their countries in international competition.  Since I have been at UT the following players have played for their countries:

Jessica Lindberg, Golda Johansson and Nathalie Mansson for Sweden
Jessica Shepley for Canada
Tina Schneeberger for Austria
Violeta Retamoza and Diana Cantu for Mexico
Sara Monberg for Denmark

Chats With Chessey, episode 2

The second installment of Chats with Chessey is now up!  She asks her coaches and teammates questions about who is "most likely" to do certain things.  For an inside look at the Lady Vols click here!!

Chats with Chessey

Sophomore Chessey Thomas has come up with a new feature for our team called "Chats with Chessey".  Every so often she will be interviewing someone in the Tennessee family and we will post those interviews everywhere!  Chessey is from Spokane, Washington and is majoring in communications.  Based on her first interview with new assistant coach Marci Turner, I think she will be great!  Click below to view the first episode!

Chats with Chessey