By:
D. Scott Fritchen
It doesn’t take long for Kansas State senior Carla Bernat, the recently-crowned Augusta National Women’s Amateur champion, to put into words the significance that the Wildcats — as a team — head into the 2025 NCAA Championship together.
“It means everything,” said Bernat, who played last year in the national championship as an individual. “I’m so happy we made it. I’ve been wanting to go to a national championship with my team, so getting it done, I was more nervous on that last hole than I was at Augusta.
“This is everything.”
The K-State women’s golf team will be playing for history when it opens play at the 2025 NCAA Championship on Friday with the first of three stroke-play rounds at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, California. Following the third round on Sunday, the field will be cut from 30 to 15 teams for Monday’s final round of stroke play where the eight teams that advance to match play in addition to the individual 72-hole national champion will be determined.
The quarterfinal and semifinal matches will be on Tuesday, while the championship match will be conducted on Wednesday.
Monday’s final round of stroke play and all matches will be shown on GOLF Channel.
“This is what we’ve worked toward all year,” second-year K-State head coach Stew Burke said. “On one hand, it was the expectation, but on the other hand, it’s turning that expectation into reality. That’s the most important thing.”
Burke on Tuesday was named to the watch list for the Jackie Steinmann National Coach of the Year award, presented annually to the top coach in Division I, II, II and NAIA women’s golf. K-State currently holds school records in scoring average (287.40) and top-three finishes (7), while it is tied for first in wins (2) and top-five finishes (9). Nine of the 12 lowest team rounds in school history have come this year.
“We’ve seen we’re able to do cool things,” Bernat said. “I actually think if we just focus on golf, we’re going to do something cool in nationals. We’ve never had a national championship. We have our chance. We might as well take it.”
K-State advanced to its first-ever NCAA Championship by tying for second place in the NCAA Lexington Regional on May 7 in Nicholasville, Kentucky. Bernat, the 2024-25 Big 12 Player of the Year, captured the individual regional title with a 54-hole score of 12-under par 204 to tie a school record matched by fellow senior Sophie Bert, the individual Big 12 Champion.
Bernat enters the NCAA Championship ranked No. 17 in the National Collegiate Golf Rankings after earning a two-shot victory over No. 1-ranked Mirabel Ting and No. 2-ranked Lottie Woad of Florida State.
“It was really nice to beat No. 1 and No. 2 in the world,” Bernat said. “I showed myself that with good mental patience and believing in myself, I can do it.”
Bernat boasts a school-record scoring average of 69.91, followed by Bert (73.09), Nanami Nakashima (73.86), Alenka Navarro (73.84) and Noa van Beek (74.06).
“It’s going to be great to go into it with two players like Carla and Sophie, but in golf it’s your fourth score that counts,” Burke said. “You can have three great scores and a bad fourth score, and that can hold you back a little bit. That’s the team aspect. Those two are leaders and do an amazing job for us, but everybody has stepped up this year. It’s been a total team effort.”
K-State, which was the first team left out of the NCAA Regionals a year ago, is one of the biggest comeback stories in women’s golf this season. The Wildcats have busted their way to sit at the table with traditional notable squads in the game.
“We know there’s a little bit of disrespect,” Burke said. “When a program hasn’t had the history of being great, people are surprised when you do it. Everybody that came here bought into the vision. We’re glad they’re a part of the first team to go to nationals.”
The regionals are finished. Now it’s time for K-State to show the women’s golf world what it can do again.
“We all have the same mindset: ‘Let’s go,'” Bert said. “Let’s show them what we can do. We are indeed at the table, and we can show them what we’ve got. It’s so cool. It’s amazing. We just need to do our jobs.”
(via @ncaachamps/TT)
