Flashes not feeling the pressure to win

The 1960s Boston Celtics. The 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers. The 1980s San Francisco 49ers. The 1990s Chicago Bulls.

None of those dynasties enjoyed quite the run of success that the Kent State women’s golf team has in the past decade.

The Flashes will go for their 10th straight conference title this weekend at the Mid-American Conference Championships at Brickyard Crossing golf course in Indianapolis.

“We’re now heading into the postseason part of our tournament, and I think (the players) get excited for that,” coach Mike Morrow said. “It’s always sweet to play for a championship.”

If history repeats itself, the Flashes will win that championship. The Kent State women’s golf program is playing its 10th season, and the Flashes won the MAC championship in each of their first nine years.

Last season’s championship wasn’t even a contest, as the Flashes beat their closest competitor, Eastern Michigan, by 49 strokes.

“There will be very high expectations for the team to come in and perform well,” Morrow said. “We’re just going to go out and play our type of golf and add up the scores at the end. Obviously we’re heavy favorites, but we’re not going to think about that. We’re just going to go ahead and play our game and see how it works out.”

The Flashes go into this weekend’s tournament coming off a dominating victory at last weekend’s Lady Buckeye Spring Invitational in Columbus. They won that tournament by 28 strokes.

Though Morrow said the team hadn’t had many days in between tournaments to prepare for this weekend, he believes the team will be ready to play.

“We should be very confident coming into the tournament coming off of a great team performance where everyone contributed,” he said.

Though the Flashes have a lot of history to look up to this weekend, Morrow said he thought his team wouldn’t feel any extra pressure to live up to the nine other championship teams.

“Because of our tough tournament schedule all year, (the players are) very well prepared for basically anything that comes at them right now,” Morrow said. “They’re not feeling any extra pressure, I don’t believe. I don’t see that.”

Contact sports reporter Doug Gulasy at [email protected].