NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. — After claiming its second-straight Landmark Conference Title on April 28, the Catholic University women's golf team is set to compete in the 2024 NCAA Division III Championships this week.
Tournament Format
The four-day event will take place at Keene Trace Golf Club in Nicholasville, Ky., just south of Lexington and will be hosted by Transylvania University. Catholic will participate in a practice round and walk-through on Monday before competitive play begins on Tuesday on the Championship Course at Keene Trace.
In a change from past years, the tournament has instituted a two-day cut beginning this year. After play ends on Wednesday, the top 15 teams and top six individuals that are not a member of those 15 teams will advance to Thursday and Friday's rounds. In past seasons, the cut has occurred after three days.
Five golfers will take the course for each team, with the four best scores each day counting toward the team score.
The Field
Catholic's five will battle 28 other teams as it goes in search of its best-ever NCAA Tournament finish. After dominating the Landmark Conference from start to finish this season, Catholic was seeded 25th out of the 29 qualifying teams for this year's event.
Carnegie Mellon, Pomona Pitzer, Emory and Redlands earned the four at-large bids into the field while the other 25 participating teams qualified courtesy of winning their conference championship events. Catholic's most familiar opponents in the field are Alvernia and Marymount (Va.), two teams that the Cardinals crossed paths with multiple times this season.
Defending champions George Fox are back in an effort to repeat while last year's runner-up, Washington University-St. Louis failed to qualify for the 2024 event. The top individual qualifier, Sydney Kuo, will represent Washington University in the event.
High-Flying Cardinals
Ed Dolan's team enters the field in great form after producing the second lowest two-day total in program history (629) to win the conference championship. Catholic produced two steady rounds of 315 and 314 to win the trophy by a comfortable 43 strokes.
Catholic enters the national championship having won its last two tournaments, and in the spring, the Cardinals only failed to finish in the top two as a team one time. Including the fall season, the Cardinals have won five tournaments and produced three runner-up finishes.
The Starting Five
At this point in the season, a settled starting five has established itself for coach Dolan. In fact, all five Cardinals finished in the top 12 at Landmark Conference Championships to earn all-conference honors.
Lauren Lombardo produced a program-record-tying round of 72 (E) on Sunday at Shawnee Inn and Resort to chase down Drew's Kayla Diaz who held a four-stroke lead of the field at the midway point of the tournament. Lombardo then produced a perfect drive on the first playoff hole and parlayed that into a par to better Diaz's bogey to complete the comeback and secure the victory. With the individual win, she became the second Cardinal to ever earn low medalist honors at the championship event, following in the footsteps of Mary Colella in 2021.
Lauren Wright and 2023 Landmark Conference Rookie of the Year Brooke Smith both finished with 158s (+14) to place in the top five and earn first-team honors. After a personal-best 78 (+6) on Saturday, Avery Mrak placed solo-seventh and freshman Mary McGuire finished in a tie for 12th to earn spots on the second-team.
It's safe to call this Cardinal squad the best team in Catholic women's golf history. This season, the group has produced the four lowest two-day tournament scores and the six lowest single-round scores in program history. Eight of the 10 lowest individual scores have been posted this season, and all 10 of the scores on the list were shot by a player that is currently on the roster.
Catholic's best finish at the NCAA Division III Championships came in the team's debut appearance in 2021 when the Cardinals finished 24th with a three-day score of 1,122. Last year, Catholic placed 25th out of 29 teams with a two-day score of 716 after day three of the competition was declared a "no contest" due to an unfair pin position.
Live scoring for the event can be found here. More information about specific tee teams will be unveiled in the coming days.
