Indiana University Athletics
Tournament Diary: Kendal Hake
1/5/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Golf
Jan. 5, 2007
Throughout the 2006-07 season, members of the Indiana women's golf team will be reporting their tournament travels for IUHOOSIERS.com. Senior Kendal Hake chronicled the teams' travel to the Edwin Watts/Palmetto Intercollegiate.
This week served as the IU women's golf team's fifth and final tournament of the fall season. Being a senior, this tournament was bittersweet for me. I felt lucky to be traveling to South Carolina to play in a great tournament, but sad that it marked the end of a semester of golf and the last fall tournament I would be playing in.
We left on Saturday, Oct. 28th. Although we wished we could cheer on the football team to a victory over Michigan State in the homecoming game, we had other things on our minds. We met at head coach Clint Wallman's house around 10 a.m. instead of the golf course as usual to avoid the homecoming traffic. At Coach's we had a great surprise when one of our alumnae, Katie Carlson, dropped by to say good luck! After saying goodbye to Katie and Ginger (Gennifer Marrs), who had also stopped by to say good luck, we headed to the airport for a long day of traveling. We arrived at the airport a few hours early and spent the time having some lunch, catching up on homework and just relaxing. After a short layover in Chicago, we arrived in Charleston and took a ride for about an hour to Kiawah Island. After some dinner and grocery shopping, we arrived at our destination. Kiawah Island is a resort community and does not have any hotels, so we were all excited to hear that we were renting a house on the island! The houses were so cool. Because the island is at sea level, during certain parts of the year it has a tendency to flood, so all the houses are built a story above ground. This was a first for our team! All the houses have their front doors on the second floor. What is normally the first floor is a flood basement, so you can image how excited we were to haul all of our stuff up two flights of stairs to the bedrooms. Once we settled in we were all exhausted from the day of traveling so we just finished homework and went to bed.
On Sunday most of us forgot that it was Daylight Savings Time and that we got to sleep in an extra hour, which we all took full advantage of! We headed to the golf course to warm up and play our practice round. The practice round went as planned, as we took notes on the sloping greens and practiced our short games on the bent grass. At times we got a little distracted by all the different types of wild life. The golf course was home to many alligators! In a pond between No. 1 and No. 10 we counted seven alligators that liked to sunbathe right next to the greens and fairways! We also spotted some large snapping turtles and a variety of different birds. About halfway through the round we began to wonder what the ruling would be if we happened to hit a ball by one of the alligators and later found out that fortunately, we would be able to take a free drop. After the round we headed back to the house to make dinner and have our team meeting. At the meeting we found out that we would be riding in carts during the tournament because there were 19 teams playing and they were worried about us finishing on time.
On Monday we woke up early and headed to the course to warm up. At 7:45 a.m. we had a team meeting to get us focused for the grueling 36 holes ahead of us and then headed to our carts to meet the girls we would be playing with. The day started off pretty rough as our team was starting on some of the more difficult holes of the golf course, but we pulled it together and started playing better. By the end of the day we had finished 34 holes, but because of darkness, we would have to finish the remaining two the next morning. After the round we headed back to the house to make dinner. All of our parents joined us! We had grilled chicken, pasta and sauce, pizza and salad. It was a lot of fun and we felt really lucky to have all that support from out families. But we were tired and knew we had some work ahead of us in the morning so we cleaned up and headed to bed.
On Tuesday we followed our normal routine of waking up early and heading to the golf course to warm up before our round. The team teed off around 8 a.m. again, but this time we had to finish the two holes from the day before and the final 18 holes of the third round. As we headed out to our respective starting holes, we cheered each other on and wished each other good luck. We found out during the round that the last round of the tournament would have as many hills and valleys as much as the first two. In the end, our result was not what we hoped for, but we had put everything we had into those 20 holes. We headed back to the house to finish packing, shower and head to the airport. At the airport the mood was solemn as we waited quietly for our plane to arrive. We boarded the plane around 7:30 p.m. and rested most of the way home. During our layover in Washington, D.C., we grabbed a bite to eat and, before we knew it we had to board another plane. By the time we arrived in Indianapolis it was almost midnight and we were exhausted. We gathered our luggage and barely squeezed it all into Coach's car before the long ride back down to Bloomington. Most of us slept on the car ride but we were all happy be home, despite the fact that it was 2 a.m. before we arrived back on campus. Overall, the trip was full of firsts for our team, and we were all a little sad that it marked the end to a great fall season.
