W. Golf surpasses goal with sub-400s on both days in N.J.

Improvement might be hard to discern in a season consisting of just three tournaments, but the Penn women's golf team has taken a giant leap forward this fall. This weekend, the Quakers shot a combined two-round score of 771 at the Rutgers Invitational in New Brunswick, N.J, good for 12th place out of 14. Place aside, it is impossible to overlook Penn's improvement this fall. Just three Sundays ago, the Quakers limped off Yale's course with a total score of 857, placing them 19th in a 21-team field at the Yale Invitational in their first-ever match as a varsity program. Although their tournament placements did not improve much after Yale, the women's individual performances did -- and quite a bit. The team saw a 57-stroke drop the following week at Princeton and just completed by far its most impressive match ever at Rutgers this weekend. Besides providing the women with an abundance of confidence to head into the spring season, the score also fulfilled a goal established by captain Natasha Miller. "We want to shoot under 400 in both rounds," Miller said last week. Penn accomplished just that, shooting a 390 on Friday and 381 on Saturday. Even the players seemed to surprise themselves. "It's not normal for a team to drop 29 strokes from a Sunday to a Friday," Miller said. But with all four participants shooting career bests, the Quakers couldn't have asked to end their fall schedule on a better note. The Quakers' task is now to condition themselves for the spring season, which will open in late March with the William and Mary Invitational in Virginia and close with the Ivy League championships at Bethpage, N.Y., in April. Practice will continue outdoors at the Philadelphia Cricket Club as long as the weather permits, but the Quakers eagerly await testing their new "personal trainer." At Penn's indoor practice facility inside Hutchinson Gym, the team will be able to take advantage of a new computer system used to record the players' swings. As the golfer hits the ball into a net, a video camera records her form. She can then set up a split-screen in which she can compare her technique to either another one of her own swings or that of a professional. "It will definitely help develop a consistent swing," junior Jen Schraut said. While the team isn't practicing during the winter, much of its time will be devoted to the recruiting process, a relatively new undertaking for women's golf at Penn. With hundreds of high school seniors expressing interest in the program, there is certainly reason for optimism. For now, though, the current squad would just like to keep building on its success, asserting that sub-400 rounds are a reasonable expectation for all spring tournaments. "We want to keep breaking goals," Miller said.

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