With the women’s golf team coming off of a less than desirable 2021-2022 season, the Matadors are hoping to bounce back this year with their fresh and hopeful roster.

The Matadors just finished playing in the Hobble Creek Fall Classic, which was a 54-hole tour that took place from Sept. 12-13. They accomplished a ninth-place finish, a three-place improvement from their 12th-place result in last year’s outing at Hobble Creek.

The team has downsized a bit this year, going from a roster of eight to a roster of six. This is because they lost four players from last season, including alumna Hanne Sofie Borgen and Kiran Sangha, senior Julia Johansson and junior Tiffany Pak.

The Matadors have found themselves a rather young team this year. The roster of six holds an average playtime of two years for CSUN. In addition, the women’s golf team has welcomed two new freshman recruits, Gracie Piar and Kim Turgut.

Although their roster is young compared to other ones they have had in the past, this has not stunted their confidence one bit.

“I’m ready to go,” Piar said. “I really feel like this team has a really good connection with everyone, we’ve been practicing hard, and I’m just really excited to get the season started.”

Piar and Turgut are not only new to CSUN, but they are also new to California. Piar has come to play for CSUN from Marquette Catholic High School in East Alton, Illinois. Meanwhile, Turgut has come all the way from Curro Aurora Independent School in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“Of course, every place has its pros and cons,” Turgut said. “It has been very interesting moving from a developing country to a developed one. I am enjoying L.A., just a lot of new things to get used to.”

While a third of the women’s golf roster are newcomers, the rest of the squad are all returning players.

Elle Laur and Julia Myklebust are coming back to the team as redshirt sophomores. Fernanda Sosa Stackpole comes back as a sophomore player, and Grace Bettis, who is on the longest stint for the team, returns as a senior.

As the only senior on the team, Bettis understands her responsibility to bring up her teammates when they are down.

“There’s a lot of pressure coming into a tournament, and I think I can kind of relieve that pressure,” Bettis said. “Words of affirmation are so simple but so effective. Golf is a very mental game and it’s easy to let one bad set mess everything up, so we make sure to pick each other up.”

This year, the Matadors are aiming to perform better than they have in the last few years. In the 2021-2022 season, they usually finished in the latter placements. However, they are putting that all behind them and are looking to win with the new assets they have this year.

“I think we can definitely win more this year,” Bettis said. “Our team has been practicing a lot, and I think we can succeed with who we have now.”

The women’s golf team will continue its season by competing in the Colonel Wollenberg Ptarmigan Ram Classic in Fort Collins, Colorado. The competition will start on Sept. 26 and will continue until the next day.