McNeese State Cowgirl golf coach Mike Fluty sent members of his team home for the holidays with the message that “off-season preparations begin now.”

The Cowgirls will return to school the middle of January and within a week or so Fluty expects to begin qualifying rounds from which to draw his team for the opener, an appearance in the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi event at the Corpus Christi Country Club, Feb. 24-25.

McNeese will play in five tournaments in the spring the last one the annual Southland Conference championship scheduled to run April 20-22 at the High Meadow Ranch golf club in Magnolia, Texas.

Fluty is hoping that is Cowgirls will be in title contention but admits that there is work to be done.

“We left a lot on the golf course (in the fall),” he said, noting that he expected his team to show improvement from its fall performance to the spring in putting, approach shots (to the green), hitting more fairways off the tee box and improve the consistency in ball striking.

Those are areas he expects his players to be working on during the break.

“We want to strive for improvement,” he said, adding that the goal was to be in pursuit of a conference championship.

To do that, he said, the team will have to undertake the pyramid–type understanding that Navy Seals subscribe to.

They view their readiness for any project like the building blocks of a pyramid, Fluty said. “Character is the base with the next layer preparation followed by performance and then results.”

To undertake these goals Fluty has nine members on the team, two seniors, four juniors and three sophomores.

The top two returnees from the fall are junior Isabel Huntsman and sophomore Maria Garcia. They ranked one-two on the team in scoring in four tournaments in the fall, Huntsman producing a 76.0 stroke average and Garcia a 77.36.

Garcia had two top 10 finishes and Huntsman one.

The Cowgirls will get senior Riley Isaac back fulltime in the spring. She missed most of the fall because of classroom work, taking the fall semester to do her student teaching. In the only tournament she played in – the season ending Pat Bradley Invite at Florida International – she shot the team’s low 18 hole score of the fall, a two under 70.

The other senior on the team is Sunny Kilian while other juniors are Anika Hovda, Janie Morrison and Roxane Nataf and the other sophs are Cameron Newhouse and Bethany Reid.

Fluty said that in the spring he and his team are hoping to “take it (the game) up a notch” with attitude, effort and action.

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Mallard Cove is beginning to be known as the golf course where super senior (70 years and older) players are among the best in the area.

“At least one a week,” is the way pro shop assistant Charles Tarbell refers to those seventy and older players shooting their age or better than their age.

The lastest is 77 y ear old Bob McCorquodale who brought in a one over par 73 last week, the round including three birdies and nines of 36-37.

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One result from a local junior player of a week ago had Zach Robertson placing 22nd at the Texas Junior Golf Tour event at the Traditions Club in Bryant, Texas.

Robertson shot rounds of 83-75 for a 157.