The Illinois women’s golf team conducted a players-only meeting after its last tournament in order to re-evaluate the team mindset and address problems that needed fixing before the final stretch of its spring season. 

The Marsh Landing Invitational in Ponte Vedra, Fla., is the Illini’s penultimate tournament before the Big Ten Championship, and features the most teams, 20, of any tournament played this season. After 15th- and 16th-place finishes in their last two meets, the players decided to take charge and look at what was needed to help each individual. Players also wanted to talk about these points in a more positive way than had been done in the past.

“Part of that was just getting everyone’s confidence up just through telling each other, ‘Look, this is where I know you’re game could be at, and this is what you should work on,’” sophomore Samantha Postillion said. “So, we all kind of came up with a plan for this week on what each one of us needs to do to be ready for next week.”

Postillion also said the team felt it “knew better” about what certain weak points are because there is frequent communication among the players, even when the coaches are not there, about what the team has to do to improve.

“It is a little different (than from coaches) just because, from a peer, it doesn’t necessarily mean more, but it’s just different,” junior Ember Schuldt said. “It does mean a lot.”

Another point brought up in the meeting also regarded the players’ communication with each other.

“For some of us, it was mental things, like comments that were made after the tournament that shouldn’t have been made to each other as teammates,” Postillion said. “Those needed to be fixed. Sometimes girls like to vent after a bad round … but there were occasions where we got too in-depth with what was going wrong rather than focusing on how to fix that.”

Schuldt lauded the team’s effort to refocus on the positive and has seen a difference because of the meeting.

“I think it’s just little cracks here and there, and it just kind of slipped,” Schuldt said. “I think it’s good that we had the meeting just to tighten up before our last couple big tournaments because it is important to never give up during a round, because you never know what’s going to happen.”

The Ponte Vedra Country Club’s 6,821-yard, par-72 course provides a challenge in its narrow greens. While head coach Renee Slone will use the practice round as an information-gathering opportunity yet again before the first round on April 8, the team hopes to shift its mindset of approaching an unfamiliar course.

“Playing a new golf course, (you) don’t know where all the trouble is at,” Slone said. “They’re only focused on what they want to do with the shot.”

Slone also stressed the importance of focusing on the goal of what her team wants to achieve, and not focusing on the impediments to that goal. She brought this up with the team after a qualifying round played over spring break, where it saw another unfamiliar course and played “quite well.” She used the performance to show her players that concentrating on a goal was more effective than concentrating on challenges.

“The practice round is going to be paramount for us,” Slone said. “But at the same time, too, hopefully we have a little different understanding of the practice round.”

Alex can be reached at [email protected] and @AlexOrtiz2334.