CRETE - After making history by winning the GPAC team title for the first time in program history last week in Cairo, Doane's women's golf team is off to next week's NAIA Championships for just the fourth time, and first time as automatic qualifiers.

The Tigers shot a three-round total of 955, 91 over par, and rallied to squeak past Dakota Wesleyan and win the GPAC title by three strokes last week.

Led by Jim Danson, named GPAC Coach of the Year on Thursday, Doane was the only team with three athletes in the final top ten and their team score was the best in recorded GPAC women's golf championship history. Every team had to play three rounds over the course of last Monday and Tuesday, and for most of these athletes, it was their first time playing 36 holes in one day, much less 54 holes in two. 

"You have to know how to improve yourself and improve on your game during a tournament to help your team out in the end," freshman Sydney Streeter said Monday. "It’s kind of an unspoken rule, you just kind of keep track of how everyone in your group is doing just to know how you’re doing for yourself. If the girls I’m playing with are doing better than I am, then it kind of is like you need to get it back together so you don’t mess it up for yourself and your team."

Streeter was one of three Tigers named First Team All-GPAC on Thursday, and Doane was the only school with three athletes on the ten-player First Team. Speaking at Doane's official media availability session on Monday, Streeter underscored the importance of adjusting on the fly - something her team did extremely well as they recovered from a relatively slow start on Monday to finish extremely strong on Tuesday, rallying past Dakota Wesleyan to capture the team title.

"As you golf for years and years, you know how to fix something and what you need to work on," Streeter said. "If something’s going really wrong, you don’t want to put too much pressure on yourself because after the round is really when you would work on it, or the morning before your next. So you kind of have to go back to the basics almost, like ‘OK, keep your tempo right, fix your line,’ things like that – you just kind of know as you golf for years."

All five Tiger starters earned at least Honorable Mention status from the GPAC Thursday and three were named to last week's All-Tournament team for recording one of the ten best individual totals in the event. Freshman Laila Saunders was one of those three, and had the unique perspective of being the first Tiger to tee off in the event, and the first to finish.

"I wanted to make a good first hole to give everyone else encouragement to keep going off," she said. "It’s kind of nice because I like watching my team members finish because I like being there at the end to clap for them when they make their final putt, good or bad – it wasn’t bad though, they did a really, really good job."

They certainly did do a good job. It came down to the wire against the Tigers of Dakota Wesleyan, but the Tigers from Doane captured the program's first conference championship even with a ton of young talent leading the way: four of the Tigers' five starters are freshmen, and the lone upperclassman, junior Kaitlyn Dumler, a Lincoln native, said this year's team has worked hard to help each other succeed.

“Every tournament we progress, we get better. This season we really just pushed each other to get better, and we played for ourselves but more importantly we played for the team and helped each other meet goals that we’ve set for each other," said Dumler, a Lincoln East alum. "Knowing that our season isn’t done is a great feeling, and knowing that this has never been done for Doane history feels really good. It’s something special. In the past we’ve made strides to do new things, but this year we really worked with each other to gain new ground and do new things."

Freshman Tia Phaisan, a fellow Nebraska metro native, credited the widespread buy-in and the bonding the whole team participated in for helping bring a ton of new people from all walks of life together so quickly.

"We all pretty much meshed well from the beginning. I mean, we spend every week with each other, two to three times per week, and then practice, so you kind of have to know how to get along and resolve problems, but we never really had to figure out ways to get along, we just kind of clicked from the beginning," said Phaisan, a Waverly alum. "It just feels like home. Our team is definitely a family, and I feel like we all look out for each other the same way a family would."

Doane's GPAC championship effort was anchored by Connie Jarm, who shot 17 over par to score a second place individual finish.

"My heart was pumping, and it was a perfect layup on the fairway, and I was like, ‘You know what, let’s just get this on the fairway, up and down, for birdie. Just keep concentrating,'" Jarm said, recounting how her title-clinching round concluded. "So i just kept concentrating and focused on what I should do next, and got the putt in – and I was so happy." 

That was just the latest achievement for the Tiger freshman who has had a stellar debut season - after placing second and earning All-Tournament honors last week, Jarm was named the team's MVP on Wednesday and First Team All-Conference on Thursday, and she's achieved all of that even with her family cheering her on from halfway across the world in New Zealand.

"Being so far apart I haven’t seen my parents, I haven’t even seen my brother in person for like two years," Jarm reflected this week. "It was a bit challenging at the start because I didn’t know how to deal with it on my own. I tended to struggle at the start of the season, but I knew I had my team, they would help me along. I would do phone calls every week to my parents, my dad is like a coach, and he’s always been there, my day one, and he always tells me, ‘Just focus on your game, don’t focus on anyone else’s game, just concentrate and keep working hard, and help others.'"

The Tigers received a rousing ovation - and a soaking from a confetti cannon - from a large crew of other Doane student-athletes and employees when they returned to Crete from Cairo last week, and now they'll begin to prepare for the 2025 NAIA Women's Golf Championships, which begin next Tuesday, May 13, in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

"That was really nice to be able to come back to people telling us congratulations after having to drive two hours back," said Saunders. "You’re already so emotionally drained from having to fight so hard for what we did, and to be able to come back and have everybody say congratulations – it makes you feel proud of what you did."

"Our community has been so supportive through everything," said Phaisan. "You don’t really realize how big of an impact you have on other people until they’re coming up to you and saying ‘Hey, I noticed that this is a great thing that you did.’ So it’s kind of cool that we can show that to our community and younger generations too."

"We look at course overviews, the course layout, to tell what we’re going to need to work on: are there more water shots, are we going to have to keep it in the fairways?" Dumler outlined. "Just kind of looking at the course and figuring out where we’re going to need to make improvements, make adjustments."