W. Golf opens spring season

The Penn women's golf team hopes to improve upon the progress made last fall when it sees its first action of the spring this weekend. The Quakers will compete in the William and Mary Invitational, to be held Friday and Saturday at the Ford's Colony golf course in Williamsburg, Va. The Red and Blue will be competing against 15 other programs, including national powerhouses Yale, James Madison and Methodist College. "This is, without a doubt, the best tournament that we've played in since we started our program last year," Penn coach Francis Vaughn said. The Quakers spent most of their spring break polishing their games at the PGA National course in Palm Beach, Fla. "The ladies have been practicing very well and hopefully will continue to improve on last year's performances," Vaughn said. "Some of them have played their best golf of late, and I'm looking forward to seeing how they do this weekend." In three tournaments this past fall, the Quakers showed steady improvement in their overall scores, even if their tournament placements did not reflect that effort. For now, though, the current squad would just like to keep building on its success, asserting that the sub-400 rounds they recorded at Rutgers are a reasonable expectation for both spring tournaments. "We're hoping to maintain the same [level of play] as before and to improve on our low score of 381 [at the Rutgers Invitational]," Penn freshman Stacy Kress said. The Quakers are also excited about the addition of sophomore Rachel Slosburg to the roster in the period since the fall season. While the Quakers may not quite be in a position to contend for tournament titles yet, they realize that they are not too far away from beginning to make serious challenges on the links. "We're going to play the best we can, and we're going to try to move forward with our games and with our team," Vaughn said. "Our goals have to be realistic -- we're playing against teams with established programs. "This year was my first recruiting year, but next year we may have the opportunity to go out and win some tournaments." At any rate, the Quakers hope to use this weekend's tournament to improve their games in preparation for the Ivy League Championships in mid-April. "We want to play well and get ready for the Ivy Champs in two weeks," Kress said.

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