Golda Borst Tabbed to WGCA National Coach of the Year Watch List
CORAL SPRINGS, Florida – En route to her first NCAA Championship finals at the helm of the Kentucky women’s golf program, Golda Borst has been named to the watch list for the 2020-21 Division I Jackie Steinmann Women’s Golf Coaches Association National Coach of the Year award.
Borst, now in her 11th season as Kentucky head coach, is one of 20 finalists for the national award. The recipient will be selected by a prestigious collection of women’s collegiate golf coaches that has been established to find the top head coach for the past season. The award will be announced after medal play of the upcoming 2021 NCAA Championship finals, which Kentucky has earned a berth to.
The Wildcats, under Borst’s tutelage, punched their sixth all-time ticket to the final stage of the NCAA Championships but the first in 29 years. UK advanced to Scottsdale, Arizona, this year’s home of the national championship, with a fourth-place finish last week at the NCAA Columbus Regional.
The top six teams from each of the four regionals moved on to this week’s competition at Grayhawk Golf Club. The 24 remaining teams will begin play Friday.
UK had come close to qualifying for nationals before, finishing in seventh place at the 2015 NCAA South Bend Regional, but this season was a breakthrough in the making for Borst and the Wildcats.
Borst helped build Kentucky into a contender last season with a pair of team championships and numerous program records, including the best scoring average in school history, but Borst’s team was robbed of a postseason opportunity by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kentucky returned nearly every key piece from that team this season with high hopes and expectations. When the Wildcats failed to match the 2019-20 success from a scoring average standpoint – and against a tougher schedule – they held steady and played their best golf down the stretch, culminating with last week’s defining breakthrough at the NCAA Columbus Regional.
UK has been a strong come-from-behind team over the last few months. At the Liz Murphey Collegiate Classic in March, the Wildcats rallied from a 15th-place standing after day one to a third-place finish. At the LSU Tiger Classic, UK moved from 12th place after the first round to sixth by the end of the tournament. And after sitting in 11th place at the NCAA Columbus Regional, Kentucky finished in fourth.
Although the Wildcats failed to qualify for match play at the Southeastern Championship in mid-April, Kentucky turned in a 1-over-par 865, one of the best 54-hole scores in school history and UK’s best SEC Championship score – by 20 strokes – in the 40 seasons of the event.
Individually, under Borst’s watch, each Kentucky player competing in this week’s national finals is playing to a high standard.
Senior Rikke Svejgård Nielsen and sophomore María Villanueva Aperribay are coming off fifth-place performances at the Columbus Regional with scores of 217 (1-over par). Svejgård Nielsen was particularly clutch in the final round with a 2-under-par 70, including a birdie on No. 18 to essentially punch UK’s ticket to Scottsdale. She has placed in the top 20 in three of the last four events and improved her 54-hole score in all four tournaments. Villanueva Aperribay has posted four rounds of par or better over her last six rounds.
Freshman Laney Frye has played with the poise of someone well beyond her years in leading the team in scoring average (73.6), top-10 finishes (two) and rounds of par or better (11). She was named to the SEC All-Freshman Team for her efforts.
And although sophomores Jensen Castle and Marissa Wenzler have had up-and-down campaigns after record-setting freshman seasons – Castle set the school record for scoring average last season and Wenzler finished third – both have played key roles in this team’s success. Outside of UK competition, the duo advanced to the national quarterfinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball three weeks ago, and Castle – an All-SEC First Team pick last season – recently qualified for the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open, the premier tournament in all of golf.
The Wildcats have qualified for NCAA Regionals in seven of Borst’s 11 seasons, won six team championships and the program has continually set new benchmarks in scoring.
Entering the 2020-21 season, UK had posted nine of the top 10 single-season scoring averages in program history while claiming 19 of the 20 lowest 18-hole rounds in the Borst era. Additionally, 19 of the top 20 single-season player scoring averages in school history (entering the 2020-21 season) and 19 of the top 20 marks for most single-season par-or-better rounds took place with Borst at the helm.
Academically, the program has been just as good as the on-the-course performances. The Wildcats have racked up 16 WGCA All-American Scholar Team honors. The program consistently finishes among UK’s team grade-point average leaders, including a 3.820 team GPA during the 2020 spring semester. The program has also won four straight NCAA awards for finishing in the top 10% of all women’s golf teams in the Academic Progress Rate, which measures academic eligibility, retention and graduation.
The Kentucky women’s golf team has never had a national coach of the year winner. Bettie Lou Evans, considered the mother of UK women’s golf, won three conference coach of the year honors during her decorated career at Kentucky. Evans was named Mid-Atlantic Coach of the Year in 1986 and 1990 and SEC Coach of the Year in 1992.
UK begins the stroke-play portion of the NCAA Championship finals on Friday. Live scoring will be available at Golfstat.com.
For the latest on the Kentucky women’s golf team, follow the team on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as on the web at UKathletics.com.
Coach of the Year Watch List
- Kalen Anderson, University of South Carolina
- Amy Bond, Florida State University
- Golda Borst, University of Kentucky
- Dan Brooks, Duke University
- Diana Cantu, University of Maryland
- Jan Dowling, University of Michigan
- Jay Goble, Baylor University
- Kory Henkes, University of Mississippi
- Lindsay Kuhle, University of Denver
- Missy Farr-Kaye, Arizona State University
- Kim Lewellen, Wake Forest University
- Melissa Luellen, Auburn University
- Derek Radley, University of Oregon
- Carol Robertson, Virginia Tech
- Greg Robertson, Oklahoma State University
- Garrett Runion, Louisiana State University
- Justin Silverstein, University of Southern California
- Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll, Michigan State University
- Lisa Strom, Kent State University
- Anne Walker, Stanford University
About the Women’s Golf Coaches Association
The Women’s Golf Coaches Association, founded in 1983, is a non-profit organization representing women’s collegiate golf coaches. The WGCA was formed to encourage the playing of college golf for women in correlation with a general objective of education and in accordance with the highest tradition of intercollegiate competition. Today, the WGCA represents over 650 coaches throughout the U.S. and is dedicated to educating, promoting and recognizing both its members and the student-athletes they represent.
