The Cal State LA women’s golf team traveled down south to the Club at La Costa in the city of Carlsbad, for the DII West Region Preview hosted by Cal State San Marcos from Oct. 21 to 22. The Golden Eagles finished 14th overall out of 17 teams with a score of 655 and 74 over par. Marie Dean finished with a score of 157 and Morgan Sjoerdsma with a score of 165.

“There were some improvements from our players from the last tournament,” said head coach Hans Kersting. “We only had a couple of days to prepare after our tournament at Sonoma State, but we made good use of our time.”

The Golden Eagles are one of the youngest teams in the conference, so the lack of experience has posed a challenge for them, according to Marie Dean, a sophomore team member.

“Since we haven’t been a team very long, we sometimes struggle to set certain goals and know where we are at with our games since we do not have prior experience in these tournaments to base our scores off of,” said Dean. “Our tournament squad itself is very young considering that the starting five are freshmen and sophomores, and this poses a challenge when we are stacked against highly ranked teams made up of seniors with more experience in collegiate tournaments.”

Despite not finishing strong in the final fall tourney, coach Kersting was proud of the team’s overall performance. “We were very encouraged by our performance at the West Region Preview,” he said. “This was the strongest field we have ever competed against, and we beat a couple of teams that are ranked much higher than us nationally.”

The Golden Eagles won’t get on the green again until February for the Point Loma invitational. Coach Kersting is hoping that his young team will get better over time and reach its full potential.