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High hopes || Women’s golf heads to conference championships
Women’s golf heads to conference championships
By JON MOFFETT
YOUNGSTOWN
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Youngstown State junior golfer Katie Rogner eyes a putt during a recent practice at Pine Lakes Country Club in Hubbard.
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Youngstown State senior golfer Brittany Stillwagon practices her iron play during practice at Pine Lakes Country Club in Hubbard.
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Youngstown State freshman golfer Sarah Heimlich takes a practice swing with her driver. Others at the driving range at Pine Lakes Country Club in Hubbard are junior Katie Rogner, center, and senior Ann Ciavarella.
Fresh off a difficult tournament featuring Big Ten schools, the Youngstown State women’s golf team is ready to pick on somebody its own size.
The Penguins will face more familiar foes in this weekend’s Horizon League tournament in Lexington, Ky. And the team has high hopes for the match.
“When we went down to Florida earlier this year, we beat Butler and Loyola,” junior golfer Katie Rogner said of the competition the team will face. “So I think we can do it again.”
Referencing the North-South Intercollegiate tournament hosted by Butler last month, Rogner said having seen the Bulldogs and other Horizon League teams gives them an advantage.
“We’ve been watching them in all of their tournaments just to see how they’ve been doing,” she said. “They play well, but we’ve been playing better. I think it helps to know what they’re shooting so we can go out there and hopefully shoot around the same scores or better.”
Teammate Samantha Formeck took it one step further.
“I think as a team we definitely expect to win,” Formeck, a sophomore, said. “This year we want to move on to the regionals, and that would be the first year that we’d be able to do that.”
The Penguins finished last out of a dozen teams at the Ohio State Spring Invitational on April 17. But the result must be taken with a grain of salt, the players said. The Penguins went up against host Ohio State, as well as other powerhouses like Penn State and Michigan State.
Rogner, 21, said the experience was important because it showed the team what the competition was like.
“I think that was a really good decision on the part of Coach [Roseann Schwartz],” Rogner said. “That was a ridiculously hard course for us. The bunkers and the greens were huge, and what we’re used to playing on is not really that extreme. And the course at conference is just like at Ohio State; the greens are in perfect condition.”
Rogner said the team had to change its approach on the course. She said normally, the battery of clubs includes only a “driver and a wedge” but the Ohio State course in Columbus forced the team to switch to their irons.
As far as focusing on the tournament, Formeck said Butler is in the team’s cross hairs. The Penguins finished fifth overall in the North-South tournament, called the Don Benbow Invitational. Butler finished eighth, one spot behind Horizon rival Detroit.
“I think, so far, we probably have an edge, I would say,” Formeck said.
One of those edges might be the camaraderie of the seven-player team.
Rogener said the team is more like “sisters” and most even live together. Four teammates live in the same apartment, and two other live the next floor down. The seventh lives off campus.