Taylor Totland \u201917 wished for a few things last May as she walked The Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Fla., but there was nothing she wanted more than to not be the only player at the NCAA Division I women\u2019s championships wearing Furman purple.<\/p>\n
This year, she won\u2019t be.<\/p>\n
Coach Kelley Hester\u2019s four-year rebuilding project was completed in triumphant fashion May 7 in Texas when the Paladins finished fourth at the Bryan regional<\/a> to secure a bid to the 24-team national competition. When Furman tees off beginning May 20 at Eugene Country Club in Eugene, Ore., it will mark the 24th<\/sup> time the program has competed in college golf\u2019s biggest tournament\u2014but first since 2008.<\/p>\n Totland is more than happy to share the glory.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, I am excited my teammates will be there,\u201d the Tinton Falls, N.J., native said. \u201cYou have no idea.\u201d<\/p>\n The Paladins\u2019 season ended last spring with a 10th<\/sup>-place finish at the Raleigh regional, but Totland earned the right to advance to the NCAA championships by coming in fifth overall. Playing as an individual qualifier was a lonely, albeit educational, experience for the 2015 Southern Conference Player of the Year, who missed the cut when she shot rounds of 83, 83, and 75 for a 25-over par total of 241, tied for 96th<\/sup> out of 132 players.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t play nearly as well as I would have liked to, but I took away a lot from it so I\u2019m looking forward to going back this year as a team,\u201d Totland said. \u201cI would definitely tell my teammates to enjoy every moment of the national championship. When I went last year I was overwhelmed and wish I got to enjoy more of the experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Furman lost one senior off that squad, and despite having only one senior again\u2014Valentina Romero\u2014<\/a>the Paladins are considerably more battle-tested and simply better this season, as evidenced by their impressive performance in Texas. Furman was third after the first round against a field that included five other top-25 teams and never fell below fourth over three days, showing that the balance fueled by the rise of 2016 SoCon Co-Player of the Year Alice Chen \u201918<\/a> and the tremendous performance of Haylee Harford \u201919<\/a>, the 2016 SoCon Freshman of the Year, has pushed the team to a new level.<\/p>\n Totland was far and away the team\u2019s best scorer a year ago, setting a school record with a 72.45 stroke average, but this time around she (73.5), Harford (73.5) and Chen (73.0) are all within half a shot of each other to give the Paladins what amounts to essentially three No. 1 players. Chen, who came in second in the SoCon Tournament<\/a> after a five-hole playoff, was Furman\u2019s top performer in the regional when she tied for sixth at 3-under, four shots back of the lead, while Totland tied for 24th<\/sup> at 3-over and Harford tied for 27th<\/sup> at 4-over.<\/p>\n Jacqueline Bendrick \u201918<\/a> tied for 32nd<\/sup> at 6-over, and Romero tied for 71st<\/sup> at 16-over.<\/p>\n Chen admits she was nervous during postseason play as a freshman in 2015, but not as a sophomore.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt last year as if we didn\u2019t belong almost. It was nerve-wracking. It was like, \u2018Ahh! This is our first time here!’\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cJust having the experience of last year and knowing what to expect and how to prepare for it in terms of a practice standpoint the week before was very helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n No. 6 Georgia (minus-6) won the regional by six shots over No. 11 Arizona, with No. 3 UCLA a stroke back in third and Furman eight shots behind.<\/p>\n Miami and Texas also qualified.<\/p>\n \u201cOur motto this last week was we were the little engine that could because we were paired with Arizona and Georgia, and they had some pretty strong athletes that could pound it out there pretty far,\u201d Hester said.<\/p>\n Furman captured the AIAW (Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women) golf national championship in 1976, which remains the University\u2019s only national title won against all Division I schools, behind the play Cindy Ferro \u201976, Betsy King \u201977, Beth Daniel \u201978, Sherri Turner \u201979, and the program also finished third in 1977. All four of those players went on to compete on the LPGA Tour, as did Denise Baldwin-Killeen \u201984, Sara Anne (Timms) McGetrick \u201985, Dottie Pepper \u201987, and Maggie Will \u201987, who fueled Furman to another third-place national showing in 1984 and a national runner-up trophy in 1987 after the NCAA took over women\u2019s collegiate championship events in 1982.<\/p>\n But the big money big schools have been throwing at athletics over the past three decades has changed the landscape and made it more and more of a rarity for programs like Furman to stand on equal ground with major Division I teams at the national level. In fact, it\u2019s difficult to overstate how simultaneously impressive and unlikely it is for Hester\u2019s Paladins to still be playing at this point in the season, as a look at the final 24 schools standing will attest.<\/p>\n The list of qualifiers is overwhelming dominated by major conference state universities, with six each coming from the SEC (third-ranked Alabama, No. 4 Georgia, No. 5 Florida, No. 12 Arkansas, No. 17 South Carolina, No. 23 Tennessee) and the Pac 12 (No. 1 Southern California, No. 2 UCLA, No. 7 Stanford, No. 10 Arizona, No. 13 Washington, No. 21 Oregon) and five coming from the ACC (No. 6 Duke, No. 14 Virginia, No. 24 Florida State, No. 35 Miami, No. 37 North Carolina).<\/p>\n Throw in three from the Big Ten (No. 8 Northwestern, No. 27 Ohio State, No. 49 Michigan) and two from the Big 12 (No. 9 Oklahoma State and No. 28 Texas) and a full 91.7 percent of the field\u201422 out of 24 teams\u2014hail from a Power Five conference.<\/p>\n The only outliers? No. 30 Brigham Young from the West Coast Conference and No. 18 Furman from the Southern.<\/p>\n Counting Furman, there are just seven private institutions, and Furman (2,700) is the only one with fewer than 14,000 students as 83 percent of the schools\u2014 20 out of 24\u2014have an enrollment of more than 20,000. Hester<\/a> played in the NCAA Championships while on the team at Georgia and led both Georgia and Arkansas to the tournament as coach, but this accomplishment means as much to her as any.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s almost a stretch to call Furman a mid-major. We\u2019re a small major,\u201d Hester said. \u201cTo get to where we have given the resources we have is really rewarding \u2026 I think that early in my career I would take it for granted when I got a team to the NCAA final, but it\u2019s hard. Even great teams don\u2019t always make it.\u201d<\/p>\n After years of determining a national championship from the aggregate scores of four rounds of stroke play, the NCAA went to a stroke-play and match-play format for the first time last season. Now, after 54 holes, or three rounds, the top 15 teams and top nine individuals not on those teams advance, and after one more round an individual champion is crowned and the eight schools with the lowest total stroke-play scores square off in match play to determine a team winner.<\/p>\n Hester\u2019s main concern is preparing her players for the fast greens and deep rough likely to be found at Eugene CC while keeping them focused at once on the big picture and only the shot right in front of them.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we just try to remind them that it\u2019s a marathon, it\u2019s not a sprint, so if you don\u2019t get off to a great start that\u2019s OK, there\u2019s a lot of golf. And if you get off to a great start, don\u2019t slack off because it\u2019s going to require really good golf for us to reach our goals,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re not going to overpower a national championship golf course. You\u2019ve got to sort of dissect it and play it one hole at a time, and that\u2019s what we\u2019ll try to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Totland came to Furman because of the program\u2019s reputation and her belief in Hester and assistant coach Jeff Hull<\/a>, and they haven\u2019t disappointed.<\/p>\n \u201cJeff and Kelley, they\u2019re the best coaches in the country, hands down,\u201d Totland said. \u201cI knew that they were going to lead the program in the right direction, so it\u2019s exciting to see that\u2019s where we are.\u201d<\/p>\n Hester knows Furman won\u2019t be a favorite in Oregon. She also knows the Paladins have the ability to continue to surprise.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that if we play the kind of golf that we\u2019re capable of we could make it into that top eight that makes it to the match play. I don\u2019t believe it\u2019s a stretch,\u201d Hester said. \u201cWe\u2019ve played with those teams and we can hang, but we\u2019re going to have to go out there and minimize mistakes. But our good golf is good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Live scoring will be available here<\/a>. For more information on Furman athletics click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Taylor Totland \u201917 wished for a few things last May as she walked The Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Fla., but there was nothing she wanted more than to not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":4513,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}