MANKATO — Freshman Emerson Garlie has not had the greatest start to her inaugural season with the MSU women’s golf team, but it looks like she’s having a pretty strong finish.
Last weekend Garlie was one of the main reasons the Mavericks were able to win the conference tournament for just the second time in school history. The Northfield native shot a 72-73-73—218 (+2) at the Paradise Point club in Smithville, Mo., to earn medalist honors for the first time in her college career. As a team, MSU shot a 921 for the weekend to finish 11 strokes ahead of second place Augustana and earn a berth in the Central Region Championships at Edmond, Okla. May 5-7.
Although Garlie found it difficult to crack the top 5 on the MSU squad most of the season, she was not surprised head coach Alex Schmidt tabbed her for that role for the conference meet.
“I saw it coming,” she said. “I’ve proven I can shoot some low scores. Coach Schmidt trusted me to do it for three straight days and I did. My game just kind of all clicked together.”
Schmidt said Garlie has improved a lot since joining the team last fall. “She started out tough in the fall, she didn’t play great,” he said. “Then she shot pretty well in Arizona in mid March and, two weeks later, at the NSIC preview tournament at Paradise Point, she put together some good rounds. That’s what prompted me to put her in the top 5 for the conference championships.
Garlie was a standout at Northfield for most of her high school career. She placed 15th at state in the Class AAA tournament as a senior and was seventh at state her junior season. The six players who finished ahead of her that junior season are all at Division I schools.
When it came time for Garlie to choose a college, she settled on Minnesota State right away. “I went for a visit and I loved it,” she said. “It’s not too big and it’s not too small. It just felt like this is where I want to be.”
For now, the Mavericks are busy preparing for the region tournament. They played on the same Kicking Bird Golf Club course in Oklahoma last October so they’re familiar with the course.
“This is an exciting time for us,” Schmidt said. “We’ve put ourselves in a pretty good position. We started out as a young team last fall but the girls are starting to believe in themselves.”
The team’s top five golfers over the course of the year have been Victoria Woytassek (78.1), Samantha Youngquist (79.1), Kelly Winter (79.2) and Ava Olson (80.2). Garlie is seventh on the team at 81.1. The fact that she was able to shave nearly 25 strokes off her three-round average last weekend has put her in a good spot for the regional.
There will be some strong competition at Oklahoma so Schmidt is not setting expectations too high.
“Everybody wants to win but, realistically, we’d like to finish in the top two-thirds of the field,” he said. “We can build on that next year.”