The NC State women’s golf team finished seventh at the Bryan National Collegiate Golf Invitational held at Bryan Park Golf Club in Browns Summit, North Carolina on Sept. 26-28. The Pack remained in the middle of the standings throughout the match despite freshman Lauren Olivares Leon tying for seventh individually at 3-under par.
Olivares Leon played well out of the gate on the first day at 1-under par, and kept up that pace to finish the match. However, a pair of rough starts from sophomore Isabel Amezcua and senior Lea Klimentova, who finished day one at 9-over and 10-over, respectively, hindered the Pack’s ability to climb the standings in the latter two rounds.
Despite the Wolfpack’s overall mediocre performance, it came away with a silver lining in the form of consistent improvement. NC State’s team finish at 18-over could have turned out much worse given its 8-over performance on Sunday, but the Pack was able to rebound and post a score of 7-over the next day before continuing the upward trend with a 3-over finish on the final day.
Klimentova in particular played a significant role in this turnaround, coming back from that poor first round to post a respectable 6-over on Monday before improving further in the final round with a 1-over performance. Klimentova’s third round was the only one where she did not finish last within the NC State team, speaking to her perseverance over the course of the match.
Inversely, junior Inja Fric started the match very well with a 1-under performance, good enough to tie for 11th at the end of the day. However, a 3-over on Monday and a 4-over on Tuesday sent her down the leaderboard to a tie for 24th.
Along with Olivares Leon, junior Natalie Armbruester put up a solid performance of her own, finishing 20th in the field. Similarly to Olivares Leon as well, Armbruester exhibited consistency as well as quality, as her lowest score of even in the third round was separated from her worst score, a 3-over in the second round, by just three strokes.
The Wolfpack now enters a two-week break before competing in the Ruth’s Chris Tar Heel Invitational at Finley Golf Club in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Oct. 15-17.
