The Texas A&M women’s golf team sets out for San Antonio, Texas this week to partake in the NCAA Regionals, May 7-9, in what it hopes will be the beginning of a 2015 NCAA Championship run that concludes in Bradenton, Florida.
The No. 9 Aggies discovered last Monday via the Golf Channel that they had been placed in the San Antonio Region which will be hosted by the University of Texas San Antonio at Briggs Ranch Golf Club this year. A&M earned automatic qualification after winning the Southeastern Conference Championship.
However, their automatic qualification guarantees them nothing more than an opportunity to advance. A&M must secure a top six finish in their respective region which is easier said than done considering that each of the four total regions boasts eighteen of the top programs from around the country.
In the San Antonio region, A&M will lobby for position with the likes of No. 1 University of Washington, No.2 UCLA, No. 13 University of Tennessee (Knoxville), No. 18 Arizona State University, No. 19 Baylor University and No. 23 University of Oregon.
A&M head coach Trelle McCombs understands the competitiveness of postseason play and loves the draw and location A&M has been given this year.
“Well I think it’s awesome,” McCombs said. “We’ve played with Washington once before this year. And we played side by side so I know the caliber of team that they have. I mean, gosh, they’ve won six times. UCLA, we’ve played in, maybe one or two tournaments that they’ve been in, but we haven’t necessarily played with them, been paired with them, but they are always a strong contender. So, we really wanted to go to San Antonio just for the fact that it feels like a home event, being only three hours away and having played that golf course, Briggs Ranch, you know, the girls were super excited.”
The Aggies have already played a competitive event, the Alamo Invitational, at the Briggs Ranch golf course this year. Despite a fourth place finish there, the Aggies fired a school record score in relation to par of -13 (275) in the final round of action.
“The way we played at that golf course last fall was amazing,” McCombs said. “You go into that tournament and you finish, however many under par we finished, you would think you would walk away with, you know, some sort of hardware, but that’s just how good the field was. But the golf course, itself, it just, for some reason, it fits our eye really well. And it may be because I’ve taken teams there for however long they’ve been having the Alamo Invitational. And I feel like I just know the golf course really well. And, you know, being in Texas, staying in Texas definitely helps. We know the grasses and we just feel like we have a better handle on it.”
McCombs and the Aggies plan to take an aggressive approach into Regionals, and will try to avoid concerning themselves with just trying to be one of the top six teams.
“Every year we go in trying to win,” McCombs said. “If we go in there with a mentality of ‘Just survive,’ then that’s how we are going to play. We are going to play defensively rather than playing offensively. Now if it just so happens that we’re the fifth or sixth team, we’re surviving, then that’s what happens, but that’s definitely not the mentality that we take.”
Perhaps an over sighted obstacle to this year’s tournament run will be the fact that A&M will have had a layover of 17 days between when Regionals start this Thursday and when they last competed and hoisted the Southeastern Conference Championship title on April 19th.
“You know from a competitive standpoint, that’s a little long,” McCombs said. “But I think from an academic side of things it gives us some time to kind of catch our breath and catch up on things, like we had a really big test week this week (last week) even right before finals which you know, fifty something other thousand kids did too. It just gives us the opportunity to kind of reset and get the academics under, you know, get them handled and be fresh and ready for next week (this week).”
All in all, the Aggies won three team championships, four individual titles and secured a national top ten ranking all with seven of eight roster players being sophomores or younger in this year alone.
“I mean, gosh, you dream of winning championships,” McCombs said. “And you know the SEC Championship, those types of things are kind of bonuses. Not to take anything away from it because they work really hard for that. But, you know, I mean, if we don’t go any further past Regionals, I mean we’ve had a successful year. Anytime you can say you’ve got hardware and you’ve put kids in the winner’s circle, I think that’s pretty successfully. So, we’ll definitely hope to keep continuing to play, but Regionals is no given. There’s absolutely no given and you never know what can happen, but I’m certainly glad we are at Briggs Ranch, that’s for sure.”
