Franklin graduate Ava Ray helped the University of Indianapolis women’s golf team win the NCAA Division II national championship last month in Florida.
Submitted photo
Forget all of the Yogi Berra quotes and motivational speeches. Ava Ray and her University of Indianapolis teammates were cooked, and nothing short of a miracle could save them.
Ray was the last UIndy golfer left on the course, with her match to decide the Greyhounds’ fate in their NCAA Division II quarterfinal against West Texas A&M last month. With one hole to go, she trailed All-American Anna Nomrowski by four strokes; her sophomore season was just a few minutes from its end.
Until it wasn’t. Nomrowski’s ball strayed far from the fairway, landing her in major trouble, and her quadruple bogey allowed Ray to halve the match with a par. UIndy won via the total-score tiebreak and moved on, eventually securing a national championship on the Panther Lake course at Orange County National in Florida.
“I knew (Nomrowski) had to do something pretty detrimental in order for us to tie or me to win, and she ended up hitting it in the really tall general area,” Ray said. “My dad ended up finding her ball, and she had to play it since we found it and she just couldn’t get out, hit it in the trees. There were several things that ended up happening.”
The Daily Journal’s Player of the Year as a Franklin senior in the fall of 2021, Ray hadn’t been playing particularly well by her standards this spring, but she found a rhythm exactly when her team needed her the most.
Substituted into the UIndy lineup during the East Regional at Prairie View in early May, Ray delivered a team-low 72 in her first postseason round and then followed with a 74 to help the Greyhounds place second and earn a trip to Florida. She continued her strong play during the stroke-play portion of the national championships, collecting five birdies in her second round on the way to a 74-71-72—217 (+1) performance, tied for 19th on the individual leaderboard.
UIndy tied for seventh with St. Mary’s (Texas) at 12 over par, trailing Flagler by 25 strokes and just making it into the match-play quarterfinals by three shots.
After losing in the quarters as a freshman, Ray didn’t have particularly high expectations this time around — but after she and her teammates somehow survived the quarterfinal match against Nomrowski and the Buffs, everything fell into place. Later that day, she carded a team-best 68 as the Greyhounds rolled to a 4-1 semifinal victory over Dallas Baptist.
“After we had all realized we were still in it, we realized how bad we wanted it,” Ray said.
In the championship match against St. Mary’s, Ray lost her individual battle against Rebecca Reed by one stroke, but after UIndy forced a sudden-death playoff by halving the overall match, she came up big with a birdie on the playoff hole, helping the Greyhounds to their third NCAA title in the last 10 years.
“Personally, I had somewhat of a rough spring, so it was nice to see that my golf game was kind of starting to go back to what it was right at the end,” Ray said. “I had played Orange County National once before for a random junior tournament, so it wasn’t completely unfamiliar to me — and as you keep playing it over and over and over again, the golf course continues to get more familiar. You know which side of the fairway you really want to hit it to, which side of the green you really want to hit it to, where’s the easiest place to get up and down from.
“I feel like as much as it was tiring, you’re playing for something that’s so much bigger than yourself. To be able to hold the national championship trophy is something that’s — it’s just an unbelievable feeling.”
Needless to say, Ray felt like she earned some down time — and she decided to take the entire month of June off from tournament play. But she’ll be back in action before long, playing in the IWGA Match Play Championship at Purdue July 16-18 and the Indiana Women’s Amateur at TPC Woodland Trails in Yorktown a week later.
Just prior to those, Ray will play in a U.S. Women’s Amateur qualifier at Walnut Grove Country Club in Dayton, Ohio on July 11.
During those events and whatever happens over the back half of her collegiate playing career, she’s now got a wealth of championship experience to draw from — including the knowledge that it really ain’t over until it’s over.
“One of the biggest things that I’ve learned from the national championship is really just never give up, because you never know what’s going to happen,” Ray said. “Obviously that’s something that you’re told in every sport, but truly there were so many times where it was very easy to be like, ‘Okay, I’m four down … this isn’t going to end up working out’ — but that one stroke or that one hole ended up being such a big deal at the end of it all. So learning that perseverance and determination is definitely going to drag into my summer golf and my future golf in general.”
