After immense travel issues, including two cancelled flights and getting locked out of the hotel lobby, the women’s golf team competed in the Purdue Boilermaker Classic for the second time, finishing in eighth place while Ryann Honea, senior from San Angelo, finished third individually. 

The tournament, which started on Sept. 1, had practice rounds scheduled for the day before. For the Wildcats, this round would not be as easy as a practice round sounds. 

“Our first flight was supposed to leave around 4:30 p.m. from DFW,” Head Coach Rob Bennett said. “We stopped to get lunch a couple of hours before, when that flight got cancelled… I got on the phone with our travel agency, and they did a good job of getting us on another flight that night.” 

Bennett also said it is usually difficult to get put on another flight the same day as the cancellation, but they were able to get it booked. 

However, the team would not end up getting on that plane. 

“That flight was going to leave a couple of hours later,” Bennett said. “We got to the airport, got on the shuttle from the parking lot to go to the terminal, and our flight gets cancelled.” 

As soon as Bennett was notified of the second plane being cancelled, he told the driver to turn around and take the team back to the parking lot. 

The flight the team would eventually take to Chicago left from Dallas Love-Field, rather than the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. 

The team finally got to West Lafayette, Indiana, around 3 a.m. Bennett and the team had communicated with the hotel that they had travel issues and would be arriving much later than expected. 

“I had let them know as we went, ‘Hey, we’re going to be there, it’s going to be really late,’” Bennett said. “When we got there, the doors were locked and we needed a key to get in… It’s a nice hotel, so we can’t get in and no one’s at the front desk.” 

Bennett proceeded to pry open the automatic doors enough to yell into the lobby. After about 10 minutes of yelling, they were heard and helped by a hotel employee. 

The practice round for the Wildcats started at 12:30 p.m. the same day, which was a member’s bounce for the already tired team. However, Julia Vollmer, sophomore from San Antonio, woke up with a neck injury and was unable to play her practice rounds or opening 36-hole round, which was unusual for the team because typically the team travels and competes with five players, allowing an alternate and the opportunity to not use the worst score from the week.

“Julia not playing meant we only played with four, which means all of those scores count for the first day,” Bennett said. 

Despite the travel challenges and the injury, the team started out with one of their best rounds as a team at the Boilermaker Classic. In round one, the team shot seven-over-par, which was the team’s best round at the tournament over the last two years. 

“I was really impressed by them,” Bennett said.

After a tough second round, the late night caught up to the team. However, in round three, the Wildcats shot six-over-par, marking a new team-best round at the tournament. 

“To shoot those scores on that hard of a course… I thought was really really good.” Bennett said. “We could have allowed ourselves to be panicked or distracted by all the things that we had going on, but the ladies did a great job of really staying focused and locked in.” 

While the team finished eighth out of the 14-team field, Honea finished in third place and had put herself in a position to win the entire tournament. Honea had previously finished as the runner-up in 2024 at the Boilermaker Classic, falling short of Natasha Kiel from Purdue University, who had a late hole-in-one and two sub-70 rounds to secure the win. 

“I hit the ball really well,” Honea said. “Probably the best I’ve hit the ball in maybe my whole career at ACU. I didn’t really miss fairways and if I did, it wasn’t by much. All of my irons shots were just pin seeking, my proximity to the hole was so good… It was just like I knew where I wanted the ball to go.”

Honea’s final round featured an eagle on hole number four, a 478-yard par five. It came after a frustrating hole for Honea in which she three-putted from inside around 30 feet.

“I was pretty furious,” Honea said. “I bombed my drive up there, and then Coach Burchette met me in the fairway, and we were only 217 yards out, and the pin was back right. I had to carry the bunkers, but at the moment I was pretty mad that I just three-putted. I was like ‘You know, I have three holes left, what’s to lose?’ so I pulled a five wood, and I hit it just right of where I was wanting to… I got up there and it’s like five feet. That was pretty encouraging to come back from a really bad three-putt with a good, easy eagle.” 

Not only did the eagle help Honea’s scorecard late in the tournament, it pushed the Wildcats to second in par-five scoring, trailing only Ole Miss, a mark the team sets a goal for each tournament. 

“We want to be under par on par five scoring,” Bennett said. “If we do that, we’re probably toward the top of the field in par five scoring.” 

The Wildcats’ next tournament will be the Lady Clerico, hosted by Oral Roberts University, starting on Sept. 15.