<rleton College women's golf team, on the strength of strong showings at the Jekyll Island Collegiate and Wartburg Spring Invitational, moved up four spots to 18th in the latest Golf World/National Golf Coaches Association Division III Coaches poll.
It marks the highest ranking in school history for the Knights, who have wins over four nationally-ranked teams this spring.
The Knights finished 12 at the Jekyll Island event, ahead of current No. 14 Wartburg, No. 17 McMurry, No. 22 Rhodes and No. 23 UW-Whitewater. They followed that with a sixth-place finish at Wartburg, with the five teams ahead of them all ranked in the latest poll. Carleton has yet to finish below an unranked team in its two spring events this season.
“Obviously, we’re pretty happy to be ranked,” Carleton head coach Eric Sieger said. “We’ve played solid team golf this spring, and hopefully we can continue that these final three weeks of the season.”
The Knights are led by junior Katrina Wood, who has posted an 83.1 stroke average and six top-10 finishes in eight starts. She is bidding to earn an individual bid to the NCAA Championships in mid-May. Laura Knutson , one of three first-year players in Carleton’s line-up, is threatening the Knights’ first-year single season scoring record at 85.9 and owns a trio of top-10 finishes to her credit.
Sieger pointed the back end of the Knights’ line-up as the key to the strong season. Meghan Gajare, Louise Buckler and Sarah Ingebritsen all have stroke averages hovering around 94, but they’ve managed to post some better scores than that this spring.
“Those three have done a great job of being there with a score in the mid-to-high 80s or right at 90, and usually we’ve been able to have two of those three in that range,” Sieger said. “If one of them plays poorly, the other two are there to pick us up with a good score.”
The Knights are scheduled to return to action this weekend, hosting the Carleton Invitational at Stonebrooke Golf Club in Shakopee, Minn. on April 12-13. Tee times begin at 1 p.m. each day. The event changed venues since the Knights’ home course, Northfield Golf Club, has yet to open. The field includes second-ranked St. Thomas and third-ranked Gustavus Adolphus. Those two teams swapped spots in the poll this week. St. Benedict, which is first among the schools listed under “receiving votes” in the poll, is in the field as well.