TUSCALOOSA, Alabama - The Alabama women's golf team won its first national championship last spring. Imagine the reaction on campus.
"No different," senior Jennifer Kirby said. "Half the students in my class don't know that A) we have a golf team, or B) we won a national championship."
The reaction in the women's golf community was different.
"It was funny at first," veteran coach Mic Potter said of being around other coaches on the recruiting circuit. "A lot of discussion about it - 'Can we see your ring?' sort of thing.
"But that died down pretty fast when everybody realized we're going to be pretty good again."
Again, the core of the team is back, led by Kirby and junior Stephanie Meadow. Brooke Pancake is gone, but heralded freshman Emma Talley has arrived.
The Tide finished second in the Fall Preview at Athens, Ga., and tied for first at an event in Austin, Texas.
It started its spring season Sunday and is in second place after one round of the Lady Puerto Rico Classic in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, where it is two shots behind Arkansas.
Pancake won "about every award available to a female golfer last year," Potter said. The team will miss her leadership "and definitely her scores."
But Talley is a blue-chip addition from Princeton, Ky. She's the only junior golfer who has won four consecutive American Junior Golf Association invitational tournaments. She has qualified twice for U.S. Opens and made the cut last year.
"Stephanie probably won't like me saying this, but she beat all of our former and current players in that tournament," Potter said.
Talley, Kirby and Meadow each shot a one-over-par 73 Sunday.
"She definitely does not seem like a freshman," Kirby said of Talley.
Kirby is a former Canadian Amateur winner. Meadow is a former British Amateur champion and clinched the Curtis Cup championship for Great Britain and Ireland by winning her final singles match. In her first two years at Alabama, the native of Northern Ireland set a school career record with five individual tournament championships.
Junior Hannah Collier also is back. The former Spain Park High School standout birdie the last two holes of the final round of the 2012 NCAA Championships, helping the Crimson Tide to a one-shot victory.
"We definitely want another national championship," Kirby said of the team's 2013 goal.Meadow concurred.
"When you get that taste of a national championship," she said, "you definitely want more."
Source: http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2013/02/alabama_womens_golf_team_begin.html
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