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. in May. The team registered 13th place out of 19 teams at the four-day tournament played at PlantationBay Golf and Country Club.

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.

While she was the team’s second-best finisher at nationals, all season Goad was one of the Buccaneers’ top shooters with three top-20 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 a transition period to the college links but 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,” Goad said. “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 fifteenth, I told my dad, ‘We need to start doing that again because I need another jump like that.’”