Finishing in first or second place in eight out of eleven tournaments this season, the women’s golf team could not have asked for a better inaugural season.
In the program’s first season, the team finished second in the conference tournament, ending two strokes behind the Seattle University Redhawks. Ryann Honea, a sophomore from San Angelo, finished first overall, and entered every day with the same mindset.
“I just thought of it as another tournament,” she said. “I didn’t think of it as a conference championship.”
After winning the conference tournament by 3 strokes in Payson, Arizona, Honea earned a spot in the NCAA Div. I Regional Tournament in Bryan, which was scheduled to take place until Wednesday.
Head coach Rob Bennett was hired in the summer of 2022, which brought him back to Abilene from Louisville, where he was the assistant coach for women’s golf. Before his year at Louisville, he was the Wildcat’s men’s golf assistant coach.
Building a program from scratch is no small task. Bennett believes the team’s success is a result of its chemistry and the hardworking culture.
“We have a lot of skill, but we got along so well that we were able to, I think, reach our full potential,” he said.
Bennett said he knows this culture helped to build a foundation for future seasons.
An important factor in this culture was the leadership of the experienced transfers that Bennett recruited, he said. Delaney Martin, a senior from Boerne, joined the Wildcats with three years of experience at the University of Houston. Honea had been recruited by Bennett to play at Louisville, and so he drew on that bond to bring her to ACU.
Bennett and Honea each said their first tournament, the A-Ga-Ming Invitational in Michigan, was their favorite moment of the season. They both enjoyed how every member of the team got to travel for the tournament and got to make memories together.
Bennett said he knows there is more to be done even though the Wildcats came a close second in conference play this year.
“Focus on good game plans, focus on good strategies to get ourselves ready for tournaments, the end result will take care of itself,” he said.
