When planning to head out to Bloomington, Indiana for the Hoosier Invitational I honestly thought the toughest part would be the road trip out and back! As Julia Roberts once said, "Big mistake…huge!".
Have you ever anticipated and prepped for something that you thought was going to happen and then suddenly it gets canceled or delayed? You must then begin again, and perhaps the energy you had the first time around is not quite the same. We knew we had a long weekend ahead of us with the format being to play 36 holes on Saturday and the final round of 18 on Sunday. What we were not prepared for was the newly renovated Indiana golf course, with much bigger challenges, all being said beautiful layout, however we had one hundred players trying to get around in nine hours.
The tournament directors opted for tee times rather than shotgun format, thinking play would move along faster. Anytime we play in tee times it stretches our day even further with six players in the line-up and close to one hour difference between our first player and our last getting started.
Needless to say after arriving to the golf course Saturday morning at 8:30 a.m. the horn blew on the course to suspend our rounds at 8 p.m., and we still had holes left to play. Yikes! Yes, it is amazing that these players could hold it together all that time both physically and mentally. College golf is not your typical Sunday foursome playing in a cart with cold beverages. Our players carry or push their clubs up and down the terrain, all day long, and may I add putt everything out! Ha!
In fact, here is a "fun fact" to give you some perspective on our day. On our drive to Bloomington, I texted our men's soccer coach, Jeff Cook, to wish him good luck, as he too was headed to Bloomington to compete in the final game against Indiana for the Big Ten title! I knew the game was set for 5:00 p.m. on Saturday and mentioned if by some chance we finish up I would love to bring the team over and cheer you all on in the second half!
One of our players, Olivia, has a cousin that plays on the soccer team for Indiana and he came out to the course to watch her, as she played her first round of the day. He left later that afternoon to prep for his game, played in his game, and I presume had time to shower too before Olivia was even done with her day. In fact, we could hear the pregame music from the golf course along with the cheers of the crowd when a team scored or made a big play! I had parents giving me the "live updates" from their phone in between shots on the course.
We left the course at 8:30 p.m. to head back to our hotel, eat our dinner in the lobby, trying to stay socially distanced from the sorority mother daughter gathering around us, and discuss our strategy for how we were going to finish our rounds the next morning and continue play for the final round. Our day finally ended at 10 p.m. and I would call it an "Ultra Marathon"!
We rose again before the sun and finally finished at 5 p.m. on Sunday. Taking no time, we hopped in our van to make the "easy" nine hour trek back home. I honestly have such respect for our players, how they handled this dilemma and battled through a competitive field of teams for a top ten finish!
Lest we forget that there is still a pandemic happening, we rose early Monday morning to head for our weekly COVID test. As I left the BJC I heard one of my players from across the parking lot, "Good morning Coach, long time, no see". 😊My new motto, Collegiate Golf, the ultimate athletic experience!
