The Valparaiso University women’s golf team rounded out the spring season’s opening event on Saturday with 18 holes of match play at Dye Course at PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie, Fla. The Crusaders finished fourth in the team scoring, racking up six head-to-head wins over the three rounds at the Ball State Sunshine Invitational.

How It Happened

• Junior Kylie Shoemake (Schererville, Ind. / Lake Central) owned a seven-hole lead in her match with Cassidy Jurkaites of Western Illinois with six to play to secure a 7&6 victory in Round 3.
• Shoemake had wins over a pair of IUPUI players on Friday in the first two rounds of the tournament before securing a 3-0 weekend by virtue of her performance on Saturday.
• Senior Katie Willenbrink (Mishawaka, Ind. / Penn) and Shoemake combined for five of Valpo’s six wins at the tournament, with sophomore Kayla Krueger (Spring Lake, Mich. / Spring Lake) accounting for the other by virtue of a Round 2 triumph.
• Valpo’s closest defeat came in Madison McCreary’s (Batesville, Ind. / Batesville) Round 3 match. She dropped her showdown with Ball State’s Sydney Anderson, who went 1 up to win on the 18^th hole.
• The point that Anderson recorded over McCreary was vital in the team scoring, as it gave the host Cardinals a 14-13 lead over second-place Xavier with two matches remaining. The Musketeers tied it at 14, but then Ball State halved its final match with Western Illinois to narrowly win the team title, 14.5 to 14 over second-place Xavier.

Up Next

The Crusaders will spend the next month in cooler weather than what they experienced this weekend as they return home to a snow-filled Valparaiso. The next time the team takes the course, it will be back in the Sunshine State, competing in the Benbow Invitational in Jacksonville on March 12-13.