Carlow golfer brings home school’s 1st national championship
Carlow University can proudly lay claim to many things, but being a big-time sports powerhouse is probably not among them.
Just the same, the small Catholic campus in Oakland was celebrating a milestone Wednesday — its first national championship in any sport.
Sophomore golfer Natalie Abt, 19, won the USCAA Golf National Championship, held over two days this week at Penn State University. In doing so, the Shaler Area High School graduate accomplished what no individual or team had done in the university’s 88-year history.
Ms. Abt is a double major in accounting and forensic accounting and has a 3.98 grade point average, Carlow officials said.
But it was a different combination of numbers that distinguished her from all other individual competitors in the tournament played at the Penn State Blue Course in State College.
In Monday’s first round, she scored a 6-over-par 78, six strokes better than Virginia Gilton of Cleary University, who was the next-closest competitor on the par72, 6,605-yard course, officials said.
Ms. Abt shot an 82 on the second
day, for a two-round total of 160. Ms. Gilton was runnerup with a 166, Carlow officials said.
On Wednesday, after working behind the counter of a Dunkin’ Donuts shop offcampus, the newly minted champion was back in class having received a flurry of congratulatory emails, including one from Carlow president Suzanne Mellon.
“I know that everyone is proud of me, and I just feel happy that I was able to represent Carlow so well,” she said.
Ms. Abt got her first set of golf clubs at age 10, but took her first swings much earlier — at roughly age 5.
“My dad cut down one of the regular clubs to make a mini-club,” she said. “He would take me to the driving range and let me swing away.”
A loss she suffered a couple of weeks ago at an invitational tournament gave her a life lesson that paid dividends this week. In that earlier tournament, she had an early lead as well, only to lose out and then lose a playoff for second place.
This time, she kept her concentration during the second round, with help from one of hercoaches, Joe Mandak. “He was telling me jokes, keeping thingslight,” she said.
In addition to Cleary, other schools represented at the tournament were State University of New York Canton, SUNY Delhi and St. Mary of the Woods.
Ms. Abt was Carlow’s first golfer and helped to create the program there during the 2016-17 academic year, the university said. The top Carlow sports finish before this week was in 2016. That’s when Carlow’s Celtics softball team finished second at the USCAA National Championship.
Carlow, with about 2,200 students, is a member of the United States Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics.