W. Golf Improves In First Season

Senior women's golf captain Christine Sadlowski did not lead the women's golf team to any team championships. Nor did she win any individual championships.

In fact, she didn't come close on either account. The Crimson struggled all season to stay out of last place in its meets, and Sadlowski finished in the Crimson's top three at only one meet all season.

But in the larger scheme of things, history might judge her contribution to Harvard's sports to be bigger than any awards she might have earned.

For Sadlowski was one of three students last year who approached the athletic department about starting a women's golf team.

"I think we each pestered them a little bit," she says. "We kept calling them and calling them."

And they responded.

Last spring the team was inaugurated, and the 1993-94 year was its first full year in existence.

"We are really excited about it," Sadlowski says."We know we're not going to win any championships or anything just yet, so we're just working to improve our individual scores."

The team went a good way toward that goal this season, as it showed constant improvement from the beginning of its fall season to the end of the spring.

"We haven't done great or anything, but we have shown constant improvement throughout the season," said freshman Alexis Boyle, the team's top player and Harvard's first-ever women's golf recruit. "That's as much as can hope for at this point in time."

The way the team started the season off in the fall, it could hardly help but improve. In the first meet of the season, the Dartmouth Invitational on September 26-27, the team placed seventh of nine teams. Next, at the Yale Intercollegiate Invite, it finished dead last among 12 teams. And then, in its final fall meet, it finished sixth of seven teams at the Mount Holyoke Invitational.

The spring season proved at least a little more successful.

The Crimson opened the year with a second-place finish at the Harvard-Yale-Princeton traingular, beating Yale to garner a much-needed morale boost. It them finished sixth out of eight teams at a tough Hartford Invitational. And finally, it placed a not-too-shabby sixth out of nine teams at the Northeast Championships at Amherst.

"Our finish at Amherst was a good way to end the season," freshman Megan Murray says. "It was a very respectable finish. It gives us something to build on."

"Next year will really be a different year," Junior Emilie Kao says. "We're looking to get some good recruits. I think we can be a good team."

WOMEN'S GOLF

Record : 1-1

Ivy League : 1-1

Key Players : Alexis Boyle, Rosie Stovell, Megan Murray

Seniors : Christine Sadlowski