Playing nearly 36 holes of golf on Friday for nine hours and another 18 on Saturday in crisp fall weather at Pecan Valley Golf Course in Fort Worth, Coppell placed third at the Heart of Texas Invitational to open up their fall season with team scores of 321, 305 and 318.

“We got off to a rough start Saturday morning, then once we warmed to it, we started playing a lot better,” Coppell coach Jan Bourg said. “Everyone is playing the same course, everyone playing the same number of holes so we just had to grind through it.”

On the par 72 Rivers course on the first day, Coppell junior Miyoko Tan led in the first round, shooting 78 and senior Jamie Welsh led the second, shooting 70. Coppell junior Lauren Rios led in the third round at the Hills course, shooting 74 on a par 71. Rios also led the team in scoring, placing eighth solo. 

“The [Rivers course] is definitely harder and longer; it’s a lot higher than the Hills is, so the scores were a little bit higher,” Welsh said. “There were a couple of holes over 400 yards, which for girls that’s pretty long.”

Teeing off at 8:30 a.m. and finishing their first round at 2:15 p.m. on Friday, the Cowgirls sped up dramatically in the second round after getting to know the largely new course. 

“They tried to separate all the teams; there were 18 teams there and they tried to separate the teams into groups of two and three,” Welsh said. “The Coppell team played so fast that we actually rejoined on the fourth hole of the seconds round and kept up with the threesome behind us and the twosome behind us didn’t catch up to us until Hole 16.”

The past two years, the tournament had been held on the Squaw Valley golf course. 

“Two of the girls had never played [at Pecan Valley],” Bourg said.  “That’s a big deal in golf, you want to know where you want to hit some shots. It’s evidence that after we played the course on Friday, we turned around and play the second time and dramatically improve the scores because we knew the course better and they knew where they wanted to hit some shots and they knew where how the green was rolling.”

Missing key player Coppell senior Chelsea Romas was replaced by Coppell sophomore Riley Allison, who turned out to be a helpful addition to the team. As four of the lowest scores in the teams of five are taken into account for a team’s score, Allison’s scores were used for two of three rounds. 

Despite being happy with the results at this tournament, according to Bourg the results don’t have much significance for the rest of the season.

“Each tournament we like to gauge where we are as a team and where we are as individuals,” Bourg said. “It’s nice to make a statement to the rest of the schools but it’s a long time until district, so we certainly don’t base anything off one tournament. We know there’s room for improvement and the good news is, we have time to work on those things.”

Still adjusting to the slower high school tournament format after spending summer and the shortened spring season to play outside of school, the Cowgirls thought their transition back was bumpy. Welsh, for example, shot her career-low, a 2-under par on the first day, but had a rough round her second day.

“Everybody, for at least one round, wasn’t happy with their performance but that’s OK, it’s the first tournament, we’re getting back into slow play,” Welsh said. “With the conditions given, we each had a good round and we each had a round we could improve upon. This is a good starting point but there’s a lot of room to grow as a team and as individual players.”

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