Women’s golf Musketeers holds off Georgetown and Creighton for the quadruple

By Clare McKinley, Staff Writer

After three straight days of golfing, on April 19th your Xavier Musketeers won their fourth consecutive BIG EAST Women’s Golf Championship and solidified their place in the NCAA regional tournament.

This 54-hole, three-day long tourney took place in Hardeeville, SC at Riverton Pointe Golf Course. With this win Xavier became the first team in conference history to win four titles in a row, surpassing the previous record holders, Seton Hall. They are now tied for second place with Louisville for the most conference titles in the BIG EAST.

The Musketeers got off to a strong start on day one making them confident in their ability to compete for the title, despite hitting a 286 (-2) on day two, the lowest team score in any round at the tournament. On day three they stepped on to the green ready to play and ended the tournament in first place with a score of 893 (+29), beating the runner ups, Georgetown by 15 strokes, the largest stroke victory since 2018.

Emma McMyler, a graduating junior agricultural science major from San Antonio, Texas comments on the win and what is means to her and the program she’s been a part of for three years now.

“Yea, it means a lot. It really validates that what we’ve been doing as a program has been paying off and I mean, you can continually see that we have been able to compete well within the BIG EAST. Winning by 15 strokes this year was a big showing of that as well,” she continued. “We’ve been very consistent all year, so I think that winning the fourth really seals that we are one of the best teams in the BIG EAST and can continue to compete.”

And The Women’s Golf Team has had a consistent 2022-2023 season. In all nine of their tournaments, the Musketeers have finished fifth or better and have won three of those tourneys with two runner-up finishes.

Emma McMyler, along with her teammates Abby Kiefer and Madison Reemsnyder were named BIG EAST All-Tournament Team Honors. This is the second time McMyler and Kiefer have earned the honors and Reemsnyder’s first time in her career. On an individual level, Abby Kiefer led the team, placing third overall at the BIG EAST Championship with a score of 223 (+7). McMyler and Reemsnyder followed closely behind and tied for fourth with a score of 224 (+8). To round out the team, Kara Carter finished sixth, shooting a 228 (+12), and Erin Kim tied for thirteenth, with a score of 236 (+20).

This win has secured Xavier’s spot in the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Championships. But with a long journey ahead of them and weeks still left to play, the team will have to maintain that Musketeer Mindset.

“We’ll be playing against a lot of the best teams in the country. So, I think our mindset is just to stick to the game plan that we’ve created and know that we’ve put in the work throughout the year and be confident that we can compete amongst those teams,” said decorated player, Emma McMyler. “We have played in some pretty good fields this year. And we’ve shown that we are right up there with the best, so hopefully we can put together three solid rounds and see where we stack up at the end of the week.”

Xavier fans can tune in to the Golf Channel on Wednesday, April 26 at 1 pm to see where Xavier will be selected to compete. The six NCAA Regionals will be played at the following locations including, Athens, Ga., Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., Pullman, Wash., Raleigh, N.C., San Antonio, Texas and Westfield, Ind. The competition will take place on May 8-10 where 156 players will advance to the championship, with the top five teams and top individual (not on an advancing team) advancing from each regional. If able to advance, Xavier will play in the finals on May 19-24.