April 18, 2010
SPOKANE, Wash. - Gonzaga University head women's golf coach Brad Rickel believes this year's team is the best, most confident team the Bulldogs have ever had.
They get a chance to prove it Monday and Tuesday when the 14th annual West Coast Conference Golf Championship tees off at Hiddenbrooke Golf Club in Vallejo, Calif.
Rickel, too, is cautiously confident as he takes a veteran, albeit young, squad into the championship. Two juniors, two sophomores and a freshman will tee it up for the Bulldogs Monday morning.
The Bulldogs lineup has freshman Victoria Fallgren of Lakewood, Calif., playing number one. Sophomores Stephanie Corey (Burien, Wash.) and Jessica Howe (Poway, Calif.) will play number two and three, respectively, and juniors Sage Suffecool (Tucson, Ariz.) and Rachel Sibbitt (Mill Valley, Calif.) will round out the Bulldog lineup and four and five, respectively.
"I think it's the best team we've ever had," Rickel said of the lineup. "We've proven we can shoot low rounds. We've shot in the 290's five times this spring which more than doubles the amount teams have ever shot in the 290's for a whole year here. But we've also balanced that out by shooting a bad round in almost every tournament. What we need to do is be one week better. Four of our players going to conference played there last year. We need to be a year better, wiser, smarter, and Victoria coming in as a freshman will be the big change for us."
And he likes the team's confidence.
"This team has more confidence than any women's golf team that has ever played for Gonzaga. Whether we can translate into good scores this week remains to be seen," Rickel said.
Fallgren has been steady. She began her career by winning the Bulldog and Eagle Invitational last fall at Spokane's Hangman Valley Golf Course and carried that start to a season-best stroke average of 76.0. She shot a season-high 244 in the Bulldogs final regular-season two weeks ago, Rickel saying she probably shouldn't have even been on the course the first day.
"That tournament she was sick and just couldn't get it done. She probably shouldn't have played those rounds, but she's so competitive it's hard to get her out of the lineup. She's had the best season any Gonzaga golfer, either male or female, has ever had," Rickel stated.
Corey and Howe have been two golfers who battled back from mediocre fall seasons to really produce this spring.
"They were out first and second best last season stroke-average wise," Rickel said. "Both had kind of an off fall semester in their sophomore year. But now they are both back to where they were. They've worked hard, are doing all of the right things and it seems to be paying off right now"
Corey enters the tournament with a 77.8 stroke average while Howe is at 78.6. Between them they only had one 54-hole score under 240 in the fall, but came back to have just one 54-hole score over 240 in the spring.
Suffecool and Sibbitt are the veterans of the squad, and Rickel said both are performing well heading into the championship.
"Sage was playing one or two for us in the fall. She struggled a little out of the gate but she's finding it this spring. I think with her experience she's ready to have her best tournament. Rachel was really struggling coming into the spring but has gotten better each week and tied with Jessica the last tournament as our best player," Rickel said.
Sibbitt shot a 228 to tie for second at last year's WCC Championship, the best individual finish ever by a Bulldog and finishing one stroke off the school's individual WCC Championship record. She had rounds of 76-77-75, bettering Mary Kate Morgan's third-place tie in 2006 and missed matching Morgan's school record for the WCC Championship of 227 set that same year. Sibbitt also earned All-WCC honors.
The Bulldogs finished a distant fourth in the five-team field a year ago, despite Sibbitt's performance. But Rickel is hopeful the Bulldogs may be able to make a move on the field this season.
"We'd like to," Rickel said when asked if this team was ready to challenge. "We're still playing two juniors, two sophomores and a freshman so we're still young, but it's a pretty experienced young. We still have to play our best golf to compete with anyone in our conference. To play with Pepperdine and San Francisco this year we have to play better than we have played yet this year. We're totally capable, we just need three good rounds and not two good rounds and one bad one."
Eight-time defending WCC champion Pepperdine University is ranked ninth in the latest Golf Week rankings while the University of San Francisco is 41st. Gonzaga, after being as high as 102 this season, is now ranked 107 with Santa Clara University at 117 and the University of Portland at 167.
"Pepperdine is one of the best programs in the country and they remained there this year. We'll have to play the best we've ever played to try to compete with them. USF is definitely the second-ranked team in our conference by a long shot," Rickel said.
But Rickel said anybody can win.
"The great thing about golf is everybody starts at zero and anybody can win anything. There are three teams that flat out have to play their best to compete with two of the teams. Two of the teams, if they play their best, may not be able to be caught," Rickel said.
According to Rickel, the Hiddenbrooke layout "is a little quirky. It has a ton of hazards everywhere and is basically a wind tunnel. It's a challenging golf course. But how I try to run our program is aggressively smart and make really good decisions before we try to hit golf balls. If we stick to our plan I think it's a great golf course for us because more often than not we'll be in good spots."
But wind is almost a given Rickel said, but he thinks his team can play in it.
"You have to expect wind. But we have played 80 percent of our spring rounds in the wind. If we can't handle it by now it's on us," he said.
The third-year women's head coach - he was the men's and women's coach one season in 1998-99 - Rickel said the key to playing in the wind is knowing how to attack the wind.
"First and foremost you have to pick great targets. If you pick great targets and legitimately try to hit to those targets, more often than not you will find your ball again. It's people who are overly aggressive in their targets or who don't understand where they should be trying to hit the ball in the wind who don't have success," he said.
