Taking sixth place in a field of 16 teams on Tuesday, NIU women’s golf traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, to compete in the 2026 Nashville Invitational, hosted by Lipscomb University.
“It’s finally coming together. There’s always stuff you look back on and want to fix, but it was a fantastic tournament for the girls,” said NIU women’s golf head coach Kim Kester via NIU Athletics. “We had more birdie opportunities. It’s no easy feat to be out in the 30-degree temperature and 20 mile-per-hour winds so I’m super proud of them.”
The Huskies’ final score for the invitational was 904, 40-over par. NIU finished three strokes behind fifth place Longwood University, and two strokes ahead of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, who took seventh.
The University of Delaware took first place, winning by 5 strokes for a score of 18-over par. Lipscomb junior Ava Bankston was the individual champion of the event, winning by 1 stroke, with a score of 217, 1-over par.
NIU’s best round of the invitational was the second round, with a score of 10-over par, 298.
The top finisher for the Huskies was sophomore Alexa Ouellet, who finished tied for sixth. Ouellet finished 4 strokes over par, with her best score coming in the third round. Ouellet shot 4-over par in the first frame, 1-over par in the second and 1 under par in the third.
Sophomore Mia Raines tied for 20th place with a score of 9-over par, 225. Raine’s best score of the tournament was the second round with 74 strokes, 2-over par.
Finishing tied for 32nd place was graduate student Caroline Kent who finished with a score of 229, 13-over par. Sophomore Dakota Tallent finished tied for 40th, finishing 15-over par with a score of 231. Kent’s best round was the second finishing 2-over par, while Tallent’s was the third with 3-over par.
The last Huskie on the leaderboard was freshman Emile Chile, who finished tied for 60th place. Chile shot 9-over par in the first round, and with an improvement of 6-over par in the second frame and 5-over par in the third, finishing 20-over par with a score of 236.
“We know that’s the type of play that they are capable of and we’ve struggled in tournament play,” Kester said. “To see back-to-back rounds under 300, it’s coming at the right time. We know they are capable of it and now it’s just getting them all on the same page as we head into the final weeks of the season.”
UP NEXT
The Huskies’ last invitational before the Mid-American Championships begins on April 12 at the Spring Boilermaker Invitational at the Ackerman-Allen Course in West Lafayette, Indiana. Live scoring will be provided by SCOREBOARD.
