By Long Beach State women’s golf’s road to their first NCAA tournament birth in five years featured plenty of Big West award-winning honorees. They will look to these players to continue to leave their mark on this season in what they hope is a deep tournament run.
The Leovao twins, sophomores Jasmine and Janae, and freshman Andee Avery all earned Big West First-Team honors. The Second-Team featured sophomore Madison Le and senior Angelina Kim came in as an honorable mention.
After being appointed to lead the junior girls’ team for Team USA in the Junior Golf World Cup last month, head coach Alyssa Waite repeated as Big West Coach of the Year in her third season at the helm of The Beach.
“It’s been an interesting year, we had a really good fall, we won twice back-to-back to finish the fall season,” Waite said. “We felt pretty good going into the spring season, but then we had some injuries and some illness that carried us through two or three events in March which put us in a position where we had to shift things.”
“Our team never got down ourselves, we knew we had the ability to win our conference championship and they were able to do that pretty palpably,” Waite said.
LBSU repeated in another award category, this time with Avery winning Big West Freshman of the Year, marking the second straight year a player from The Beach has won it.
“I didn’t really come into this with the mentality of trying to get Freshman of the Year, but I had a really good fall season and it was kind of a goal throughout the spring season,” Avery said.
Avery finished in the top 10 of four tournaments this year, including a podium finish at the Big West Championship in Las Vegas. She credits the coaching staff with their one-shot-at-a-time approach and teammate Jasmine Leovao for inspiring her last year with her play.
“My roommate is amazing, she is super supportive and everyone on the team is super close and I am really happy here,” Avery said.
Last year’s Big West Freshman of the Year winner Jasmine Leovao continued to shine this year with another successful season, including defending her title as individual champion at the Big West Championship, becoming the first player in 20 years to repeat as the individual champ.
“I’m really proud of all the work we’ve put in this season as a team, we had really early workouts and stayed late for practice and it’s just been a grind all season,” Leovao said.
The Beach drew the No. 10 seed in the twelve-team field for the Cle Elum Regional in Washington, which will take place at the Tumble Creek Club from May 6-8.
“I’m really looking forward to regionals, it’s a stacked field but I think there’s no expectations. We are going to try and go in with the same mentality as we did in conference and see where it takes us,” Leovao said.
