Another season has come to a close for the Elon University women’s golf team, and while head coach Chris Dockrill admits this campaign has been “probably one of (their) rougher seasons,” he’s proud of his team’s hard work and dedication.
“We had a lot of highlights and good tournaments,” Dockrill said. “The kids really worked hard. It was a good group of kids that really gave a hard effort. It’s just in the conference championship, we didn’t play as well as we needed to play.”
For senior Virginia Mayer, her final season was a series of highs and lows, for both her team and herself.
“We were very up and down,” Mayer said. “I had some tournaments that I thought I did really well, and I think everyone did really well in some and struggled in others, so everyone can see what they need to work on from that.”
Mayer wished her senior season had come to a better conclusion, but she won’t dwell on something she can’t control.
“Obviously, my senior year, I would’ve liked to have gone out and won everything in the conference,” Mayer said. “We didn’t do that, but, like I said before, we all had times where we played well and times where the team clicked.”
The team’s best finish was at a tournament in Kiawah Island called the Edwin Watts/Kiawah Island Classic against a strong, one 100-team field. Dockrill described his team’s performance at the event as having “a great tournament.”
Despite only cracking the top 10 in one other event, Dockrill was proud of his team’s showing in several other high-profile tournaments and over the course of the season as a whole.
“We still had a winning record,” he said. “We still finished very high in a lot of good events. We play against a lot of big schools. (We play schools from the) ACC, SEC, Big East, we play a good schedule, so it’s tough, you have to play well.”
Dockrill was also very pleased to see Martyna Mierzwa, a junior from Poland, be named to the All-SoCon team.
“(I take) great pride (in it),” Dockrill said, “I’m pretty excited for her. I think it’s great she got that honor. She deserves it, so were looking to have more of those honors next year.”
Mayer says playing in the Southern Conference championships was a valuable experience, despite not doing as well as she had hoped.
“It’s a really tough course. It really tests your game, so if you have any kind of weaknesses in your game it will come out there,” Mayer said. “So I think that happened some days, and it’s a little bit frustrating, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s an awesome experience playing in a conference championship.”
The coach is looking forward to next year and is excited about the new additions to his team, as well as his returning players.
“We have three freshmen coming in (and) a possible transfer coming in,” Dockrill said. “We’ll have a totally different look on the team. We have four seniors that are leaving, so we have a big void there. The kids that are coming in, we’ve been watching them for a long time and they’re very good players. We’re really excited about our future.”