Rainy and windy conditions could not prevent junior Katie Ecker from winning at Wild Ridge.

She shot a 79 in the only round that was played.

The team also fared well as a whole, placing second at the UW-Eau Claire Spring Invitational this weekend.

The third-ranked Blugolds made a total of 336 strokes and were narrowly bested by fifth-ranked Gustavus Adolphus College (Minn.), who took first with a total of 334 strokes.
Despite how high the team placed, the rain did make things more difficult for the 58 women playing on Saturday.

“It’s a lot harder to swing,” junior Sara Mattes said. “The more layers you have on, the harder it is to move around. When your clothes get wet, your grip gets slippery. We have rain gloves, but they also affect your grip.”

Even though their scores were a little higher than normal, coach Meghan Sobotta said she was pretty satisfied with how the team played.

“It’s a lot of things to deal with,” Sobotta said. “You have a lot more to think about, a lot more to worry about, including holding your umbrella.”

Another problem, junior Emily Swift added, was the cold.

“We could’ve played better,” Swift said. “But the weather was so cold and rainy that there wasn’t much we could do.”

Besides Ecker, two other Blugolds made it into the top four of the tournament.

Playing for the Blugolds’ first team, Mattes came in second place with 80 strokes.

Making it to fourth place was junior Emily Swift, who tied with three other women with 82 strokes.

One reason why the girls were able to hold their own in the bad weather could be thanks to Eau Claire, Mattes said.

“We play in the wind most of the time,” she laughed.

“Individually, I’m very satisfied with how we played,” Mattes said. “I would have loved for the team to win, though.”

Swift, however, seemed to have been slightly disappointed with her individual score.

“I would’ve liked to place higher, especially at our home tournament,” Swift said. “If I could have started out better, it would have been a better day.”

The second round of the home invitational was planned to be held on Sunday, but was cancelled due to weather conditions.

“It’s been a horrible spring, weather wise,” Sobotta said. “Not just for us. Two other tournaments that we played in went down to one day because of the weather.”

Mattes said she was a little disappointed that the second round was canceled.

“On the second day you have the potential to do better and the potential to do worse,” she said, “but I wanted us to win our last trial tournament before nationals.”

Sunday’s weather featured cold windchills with winds blowing 30 mph and Sobotta said that canceling the second day of the invite was necessary.

“It was a difficult decision to make, especially being down two strokes,” Sobotta said. “But the coaches got together and made the decision to cancel.”

On top of the difficulty of playing in such weather, the coaches were also worried that the girls would get sick and they didn’t want them to have to deal with playing like that, Sobotta added.

The next step for the Blugolds is the 2011 NCAA Championships, to be held at the Mission Inn Resort in Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida.

The women received an automatic bid for the championships after winning the WIAC Championships in fall.

“The team’s excited to go to nationals,” Mattes said. “We have the potential to actually win this year. I think we all have a lot of hope that we’ll do well.”

Swift agreed.

“It seems this whole semester we’ve been kept down by bad weather,” Swift said. “It’ll be nice to play in some good weather.”