The Ephs finished third at NESCACs and await bid to the NCAAs. (Photo courtesy of Maya Singh.)
No. 4 women’s golf hosted the NESCAC Championships at Taconic Golf Club over the weekend, placing third on a tightly-contested podium. Despite trailing the tournament leader by double digits early in the last day, the Ephs rallied to finish just two strokes behind first place, the No. 5 Amherst Mammoths, and one stroke behind the second-place No. 9 Middlebury Panthers.
Across the three-day tournament, Michelle Ding ’28 led the Ephs with an 11-over par finish, placing fourth overall. Euna Lee ’26 followed closely, tying for fifth at 12-over par. Natalie Cheong ’27 placed seventh at 13-over par, and Zoe Wynn ’29 tied for tenth at 15-over par.
After winning three tournaments during a successful fall season, the Ephs returned to spring competition with back-to-back tournaments in April, placing second at the Jack Leaman Invitational in Amherst, Mass., and fourth at the Northeast Invitational, hosted by Wellesley.
Heading into NESCACs, the Ephs hoped to build on those performances. “Our main focus going into this week was to work on any of the shortcomings from The Ranch [at Wellesley],” Cheong said. “We wanted to bring ourselves back from the last tournament.”
This season marked the second year of the NESCAC tournament’s transition from a 36 to a 54-hole event. On Friday, the teams struggled with windy weather conditions, with the Panthers leading the way at 21-over par while the Ephs held third at 26-over par. “The high scores from Day One probably came from the huge wind gusts in the afternoon,” Lee wrote to the Record. “The greens were freshly cut and rolled, so a lot of the teams were getting used to the speeds and reads of the greens.”
Wind and cold continued to affect the players’ performance on Day Two. However, most players found improvement, with Middlebury leading the pack at 7-over par on Saturday. “Players got used to the bad weather and learned to battle through it and minimize the damage,” Ding wrote in an email to the Record.
The Ephs finished off the second round with three birdies and an eagle from Cheong at the 18th hole, putting them in fourth place — just one stroke behind the Cardinals. “When someone gets a birdie, we’ll flap our wings to other people on the course, just to make people smile and for momentum,” Wynn said. “A lot of times, it’ll lead to another person getting a birdie.”
Ding led the Ephs on Day Two, finishing even par. The results marked an improvement from her 7-over par score the previous day, a shift that reflected the unpredictable nature of the course. “Taconic is a golf course where anything can happen,” Ding wrote. “That gave me motivation to keep pushing through.”
As the Ephs headed into Day Three nine strokes behind the leading Panthers, they aimed to set aside their nerves and play their best golf. “For Day Three, we all had a ‘we have nothing to lose’ mindset,” Lee wrote. “Instead of having an expectation that we need to play well, we used our home course as an advantage that we know this place more than anyone on this field.”
Though the gap briefly widened in the early holes, the Ephs surged back, and the tournament quickly turned into a three-team showdown. The Ephs, Mammoths, and Panthers — the only three teams to have won a NESCAC title in the event’s 12-year history — finished within two strokes of each other. The fourth-place Wesleyan Cardinals finished the tournament behind the Ephs by a margin of 22 strokes.
The Ephs posted the best score of the day at 14-over par, three strokes better than the Mammoths, who finished the day at 17-over par. Ding and Lee each recorded two birdies in their final rounds, both finishing at 4-over and placing in the top five overall.
Cheong led the field in scoring on Day Three, with six birdies contributing to a final score of 70, 1-under par. Her performance propelled her up eight spots, a result she credited to the Ephs’ habit of reflecting on their rounds immediately upon their completion. “After our [18th hole], we’ll reflect back on our round and say our favorite shot in the round,” she said. “We do that to reflect on what was good, and then we talk about what was bad and what wasn’t working.”
Despite the individually competitive nature of the sport — players compete against each other in practice to be selected for high-level tournaments — the Ephs said that they are able to balance competition and camaraderie. “Our team is competitive with one another, but we also want the best for everyone, and [to] support each other’s achievements and accomplishments,” Wynn said.
With their third-place finish, the Ephs did not secure an automatic bid to the NCAA Div. III Championships in Palm Desert, Calif., on May 19. They will await at-large bid selections on May 11. “Hopefully, we will get a chance to prove ourselves and our skills,” Ding wrote. “We know as a team that we are capable of incredible things and hope that we are given the opportunity to show that.”