University Star

Despite mixed results throughout the season, the Texas State golf team’s enter their next tournaments with the same objective: to win.

The men’s team will play in the Lone Star Invitational on Texas-San Antonio’s campus and the women will travel to Oklahoma for the OU Susie Maxwell Invitational.

Men’s Coach Shane Howell said the Lone Star Invitational is the team’s toughest tournament thus far.

“There will be quite a few top 25 teams in the country along with a couple top 10 teams, like Texas A&M and Baylor, at the tournament,” Howell said. “The competition will be tough and the golf course is very difficult as well.”

With two losses on the season, Howell said the team is ready to win no matter how steep the competition.

“This team is really self-motivated,” Howell said. “They want to be great and win. No matter how difficult the competition is or how tough the course, we are going to tee it up looking to win.”

The course the men face at UTSA is in between the level of difficulty of the previous two tacks, according to Howell.

“At the first tournament, the course was very easy to score,” he said. “At the second, it was more difficult and you really had to manage your game. This course falls in between the two. I want the team to take what they have learned from the first two tournaments and apply those lessons at UTSA.”

Women’s Coach Mike Akers said the team has to shoot low scores to remain competitive.
“The teams that will be at OU are very good,” he said. “Texas A&M is ranked 10h in the country and Oklahoma is ranked 23rd right now. We are going to see some very good teams up there and we need to go and shoot some low scores.”

Freshman Lejan Lewthwaite said after her last performance at the Mizzou Invitational she has set new expectations for herself and hopes the team follows suit.

“I want to keep shooting 75 and lower,” Lewthwaite said. “I know now that I can shoot under par more than once. I have to keep scoring low and hope that the team does as well.”

The course at Oklahoma, Akers said, is going to have a lot of high trees. Lewthwaite said she will focus on her game and not the course.

“When I am playing I only focus on what I am doing now and winning the tournament,” Lewthwaite said. “I play the course as it is. I don’t change my game from course to course. I just play it as it comes.”