DeKALB – NIU women’s golf is sporting a new-look roster heading into its 2024 fall season.
With four new freshmen on the roster, the Huskies have a lot of new talent to fill the shoes of former NIU golfers such as Jasmine Ly or Emily Romancew.
The Huskies also added graduate student Emma Thorman to their roster during the offseason. Thorman attended Illinois Wesleyan University prior to NIU.
“We are super excited,” said NIU women’s golf head coach Kim Kester. “It’s a whole new group. We have five new faces and three returners. We are very young but we’re excited to start the season.”
NIU lost four athletes in the offseason, with seniors Ly, Romancew and Karen Liu graduating along with graduate Sydney Naro.
Ly had an impressive final campaign with the Huskies last year, earning two MAC golfer of the week selections, being selected to the All-MAC first team, as well as tying the NIU record for low round when she shot a 67 at the Johnie Imes Invite.
Romancew also finished her NIU career with an All-MAC first team selection, as well as a first place finish at the NAU Red Rocks Invitational in March.
“Those four will never be replaceable,” Kester said. “You lost a lot of leadership in those four. So the offseason is trying to see how are we going to do things differently?”
Kester is entering her 12th season as the head coach of NIU women’s golf, and mentioned that this is one of the youngest teams she has coached in her time at NIU.
The eight person roster features five underclassmen, consisting of four freshmen and one sophomore. The roster also features only three returning athletes from last season, seniors Caroline Kent and Jóhanna Lúðvíksdóttir and sophomore Eva Nijenhuis.
“With the four new girls you’re going to have to have a lot of patience on our end because this is all new to them,” Kester said. “It’s also new to us having this young of a class, we haven’t had this young of a class since 13 years ago when I started here.”
Kester mentioned that the team’s fall schedule will be a challenge for the Huskies. She believes that with a challenging fall schedule, it can help the younger athletes.
The Huskies have three invitationals hosted by Big 10 schools on their fall schedule, hosted by Michigan State University, the University of Iowa and the University of Illinois.
“Obviously, you play every tournament to win,” Kester said. “This schedule is one of the more challenging ones we’ve ever had, which is pretty good for the freshman. We just want to see improvements from event to event, and then after the first five events, we will look at each one and see what we need to improve on.”
The Huskies will begin their season on Sunday at the Redbird Invitational, hosted by Illinois State University, in Normal at the Weibring Golf Course. Live stats are available via Scoreboard.
