Pride women's golf closes out historic season with double runner-up finish at Heart Championships

SMITHVILLE, Mo. - Closing out what will easily be considered the best season in program history, the Clarke University women's golf team finished the Heart of America Athletic Conference Championship as the Team Runner-Up with their final three-round score of 988 strokes at the Paradise Pointe Golf Complex Outlaw Course on Monday and Tuesday.

The second place finish produces the best team finish on the leaderboard since the Pride joined the Heart prior to the 2015-16 season where they finished in fifth place out of 11 teams as the only other season where CU women's golf did not see themselves either as the last place or next to last place team at the conference championship.

For their stroke count of 988, Clarke's first and third round scores of 327 and 328 were the fifth and sixth best team scores in an individual round over the entire tournament as they also sandwiched around a 333 in the second round in their second 18-hole round of Monday's opening action.

On the individual side, the Pride also had an individual runner-up in freshman Amalia Ortega, who finished tied for second place with a 54-hole final score of 299 (+13) to end up just three strokes shy of the champion Chiara Bothe of Mount Mercy as Ortega shot all three rounds in the 70s with an opening round 77 then produced back-to-back scores of 76, totaling 40 holes of par or better over the entire 54 holes of the tournament.

Two other members of the CU lineup finished in the top 20 of the individual leaderboard, first Holly Elliott posting a 12th place finish at 245 in total with her final round breaking 80 at a 79 to improve on her back-to-back scores of 83 in Monday's pair of rounds while Rose Halle posted a 250 for 16th place scoring her low round of 80 in Monday's opening round before finishing up with back-to-back scores of 85 in rounds two and three.

The final two individuals in the five-women lineup for head coach Brock Hartley were Sydney Minyen and Rose McCartney with Minyen scoring a 266 (89-89-88) while McCartney finished at 273 (87-90-96) with the Pride taking McCartney's first round score and Minyen's scores in rounds two and three.

Graduating just two members of the 2025-26 roster, Elliott and Irene Metaxas, the Clarke women's golf will look to continue to build off of this most successful season that produced five team finishes of first or second as well as three fall tournament wins and the conference runner-up for Ortega.