One of Cal Poly Women’s Golf’s top performers, Elizabeth Scholtes, won the Big West Freshman of the Year Award after an impressive collegiate debut season.
“It’s motivating me to do better next year,” Scholtes said. “I feel like I had a really good start to my college career and hope that it only goes up from here.”
Through her freshman season, Scholtes recorded a 74.5 scoring average, five top 20 finishes and eight rounds of scoring par or under.
“It’s a tremendous honor, obviously, and it really shows her level of play and her level of consistency, because it covers the entire season,” head coach Sofie Aagaard said.
With her best performance of the season, Scholtes lead Cal Poly to finish second place in the Battle of the Rock on Feb 12. Individually, the Alameda native tied for first place by scoring rounds of 68, 72 and 72.
“That course is quite challenging, and there’s a lot of course management to it,” Aagaard said. “And so with that there’s some hard shots, but she executed it perfectly fine … it’s impressive too, to see a freshman win in her first year.”
Scholtes also earned an All-Big West First Team honor with sophomore Caroline Cantlay. Freshman Vanessa Wang received an All-Big West Honorable Mention.
“To me it means that we most likely have a strong few years coming with that kind of strong leadership, and on the scoring side already as freshmen,” Aagaard said.
Scholtes credited Aagaard’s coaching in improving her mindset when handling the frustration that can come from golf.
“At this point, all of the people that we’re playing with, they have good techniques,” Scholtes said. “So it comes down to, ‘How do you handle the bad shots? How do you handle things when they’re visually challenging?’ And that really helped me a lot this year.”
“She is a greatly motivated and disciplined in everything she does,” Aagaard said. “That shows through both her academic grades and also that what she does in a golf course.”
“She is a greatly motivated and disciplined in everything she does”
In high school, Scholtes had a 4.69 GPA. In her first two quarters at Cal Poly, she has maintained a 4.0 GPA, despite having to miss class since tournaments are played on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
This season, Scholtes was the Mustangs’ second-best performer, right behind Cantlay. Last year, Cantlay became the first ever Mustang to win the Big West Freshman of the Year Award.
“It’s really cool, what it means for this program, because we’re still really young team, and we still have many years to grow,” Scholtes said. “I’m hoping that our freshmen next year will win it too, just to keep the streak going.”
“She’s very inspired and motivated to practice, which you have to be as a golfer, because you spend a lot of time on it,” Aagaard said. “So, I don’t know if there’s a ceiling for her.”