TEAM OF THE YEAR RUNNER-UP: Hard Work Brings Home Another Title

The Harvard women’s golf team found itself in an unusual position entering the 2008-09 season.

After earning its first-ever Ancient Eight crown in its 2007-08 campaign, the Crimson became the hunted instead of the hunters as it looked to defend its title this year.

Not only did Harvard respond by topping the Ivy League ranks for the second- consecutive year, the Crimson did so in unprecedented fashion, winning all but one of its tournaments along the way. Harvard placed second in its lone defeat of the year to Princeton, but quickly avenged the lone blemish on its schedule by besting the Tigers a week later at the Ivy League Championships.

While there were likely many factors contributing to such a successful season for the Crimson, none was more important than the extra practice many team members put in throughout the year.

“Each person on the team worked hard individually this season,” rookie Christine Cho said. “Even when we did not have team practice during the winter months, many of us would practice in our indoor facility, and this really helped us at the end of the year.”

Crimson coach Kevin Rhoads also played a crucial role in preparing the girls throughout the season, which included victories at the Princeton Invitational and the Yale Fall Intercollegiate for the first time in Harvard history.

“Coach Rhoads was great,” Cho said. “He is helpful when he needs to be, and lets us figure things out on our own when we should.”

Despite the success the Crimson found during its regular season and throughout tournaments in the Northeast, Harvard was unable to improve on its 19th-place showing at the NCAA Regional Championship in early May.

“[That] was a tough weekend for us,” departing senior Emily Balmert said. “We did not play as well as we would have liked or probably as well as we could have based on our performances this year. We are a little disappointed, but I don’t think [that] weekend can erase the strong year that we did have.”

While the national tournament did not go as well as the Crimson would have liked, the fact that Harvard made the NCAA field for the second-consecutive year shows just how far this program has come.

In the course of Coach Rhoads’ five seasons at the helm, the Crimson has won 20 tournaments—four times the number Harvard had won in the team’s entire history before Rhoads joined the program.

As can be seen through its performances this year, the Crimson has risen to the top of the Northeast ranks in women’s golf and now looks to tackle tougher competition on the national scene.

“We just need to keep doing what we have been doing,” Cho said. “If all of us had played the way we know we could have, we probably could have advanced at the national regional tournament this year. I am excited to see what we can do at that tournament next year, hopefully, if we qualify again.”

With the way things went this season, the organizers of the NCAA Regionals may want to hold a spot for the Crimson at next year’s tournament.

—Staff writer Thomas D. Hutchison can be reached at tdhutch@fas.harvard.edu.