As only a freshman, Sealy High School alum Madeline Goad and her Blinn Junior College teammates competed in the program’s first appearance at the NJCAA Women’s Golf Championship in Daytona, Fla. last week. The team registered 13th place out of 19 teams at the four-day tournament played at Plantation Bay Golf and Country Club.

Still, when Goad said she and some of her teammates had poor days the first round their coach had a simple message for them at the start of the second round.

“‘We’re already here, there’s nowhere else to go,’” Goad said of the advice from assistant coach Katie Johnston. “It’s not like we were going to qualify for anything else, I was able to relax because there was nowhere else to go.”

The former Lady Tiger, who competed in UIL State Championships, bounced back from a first-round score of 97 and finished with rounds of 85, 88 and 86 for a four-round total of 356, which was good enough for 46th overall in the nation. It was also the team’s second-best individual finish behind Cheyenne Sowda’s total of 337 which was good for a tie for 25th overall.

Although the four-day tournament was the longest Goad had competed in, she said her experience with the Texas humidity paid off in the sunshine state against competition used to colder climates.

“We had girls from Indiana and Wyoming most days that we played with and they were not ready for that,” Goad said. “I think being used to that heat, in general but especially during this time the year, kind of helped us. Some of the girls were telling us – I think they were from Indiana – that it was snowing back home.”

While she was the team’s second-best finisher at nationals, all season Goad was one of the Buccaneers’ top shooters with three top20 finishes, including a sixth-place finish at the season-opening match at Pinecrest Country Club in early March. She also became the first Blinn women’s golf representative to be named to the all-region team with a fifth-place finish.

The Sealy alumnus said there was of course a transition period to the college links where the tee boxes presented a new challenge.

“When I first started playing, I kept getting disappointed because I felt like I wasn’t doing as good as I did my senior year,” Goad said in a May 17 interview. “My senior year I was consistently shooting low 80s, high 70s and that was kind of annoying to transition over to college, where a round in the mid-80s was a good score for me. I was confused and struggling to figure out why it seemed like I’m hitting so short and that’s just because they move the tees back when you go to college. There was definitely a transition from being able to just bomb it down and hit a pitching wedge and now I still hit a long drive but I have to take a five iron or something. It’s a completely different game.”

She said she was able to get by with a little help from her friends, who also presented a new experience where Goad wasn’t used to being able to hang out with a group of her teammates nearly every day on and off the course.

“I think the main thing that has come from this season has been friendships. Golf is a very individualized sport, and a lot of times like in summer leagues, it’s just you and your parents you don’t really hang out with people, you don’t travel in groups or have a team to hang out with. But when you get to college, it’s a whole different experience,” Goad said. “When we get done with schoolwork, I would run over to the other girls’ apartment and we would just hang out until 2 a.m. just talking and it was a different experience than I’ve ever had. To have people who not only care about golf like you do but also like to have a relationship with them was awesome.”

Although she will say goodbye to one of her teammates from this year’s nationally-ranked team, Goad said three others will return alongside her next year and will look to find their way back to the last meet of the season.

“Four out of five of us are returning, so it should be better than it was this past year,” Goad said. “I do expect us to come back and go to Nationals again next year just because of our region and how many of us are returning. All four of us freshmen didn’t have our best years, so I do expect a better turnout next year.”

To possibly help her get there, Goad will reenlist the help of her high school coach, her father Lonnie, this summer to hopefully produce another skill jump like she saw one summer in high school.

“Every day during the summer in between my sophomore and junior year, we’d wake up at 8 a.m. and go out, hit balls until 11 a.m. or noon and I told him that I need to get back on that because that summer was one of the biggest jumps that I ever saw in my game,” Goad said. “As soon as I got home Saturday the 15th, I told my dad, ‘We need to start doing that again because I need another jump like that.’”