OKLAHOMA CITY (Dec. 29, 2018) –
Kate Goodwin barely made the field for the NCAA Division II West Super Regional in May, but once there, the Oklahoma Christian golfer showed she most certainly belonged.
A sensational final-day rally ended with Goodwin – the last player chosen to play in the tournament – holding the championship trophy, a win that propelled her into a run of success that continued into the fall semester and ranks as the No. 3 story in OC athletics for 2018.
A late-season injury to Goodwin's OC teammate,
Abigail Rigsby, effectively ended the Lady Eagles' hopes of qualifying for the West Super Regional as a team. But six spots are allotted in the tournament for individuals whose teams don't qualify and Goodwin, a junior from Tulsa, received the last of those six spots.
In her first round at Hillcrest Country Club in Durango, Colo., Goodwin shot a 6-over-par 78, but she improved to a 75 in the second round and was in 11th place, in contention to become one of the three individual qualifiers from the Super Regional into the Division II Championship.
She opened her final round with four birdies in her first five holes to vault up the leaderboard and finished with the best score of the day, a 2-under 70. Then, she waited and watched as every other golfer but one in the 66-player field fell behind her.
Goodwin shared the Super Regional title with Emily Winter of West Texas A&M and advanced to the national tournament at Bay Oaks Country Club in Houston, where she tied for 48th. She became the first OC women's golfer to receive Division II All-Region honors.
The regional title was just the start of a sizzling stretch of golf for Goodwin, during which she won three summer amateur tournaments, reached the Oklahoma State Amateur semifinals and moved into the World Amateur Golf Ranking. During the fall season, she picked up her fourth collegiate win, taking top honors in the Dallas Baptist Match Play Invitational, a tournament that featured most of the Heartland Conference's top players.
Goodwin's success is a key reason the Lady Eagles rose as high as No. 15 in the Women's Golf Coaches Association's Division II rankings in the fall and will enter the spring season at No. 17 nationally. It's the first time the OC women's program has been ranked nationally at the Division II level.
