Kansas State University

By chance, Noa van Beek sits at the exact same sturdy dark wood table in a far corner of the Colbert Hills Golf Course clubhouse that she occupied a year ago when all this began. Yes, a little more than a year has passed since the Kansas State women’s golf team sat together, alone, in front of the TVs, hoping and praying for “Kansas State” to flash upon the screen during the NCAA Women’s Golf Selection Show. It was as excruciatingly horrid as one could imagine — how the TV screen showed each 12-team NCAA Regional field, six regional sites in all, with 72 total teams selected for the postseason.

 

But not the Wildcats.

 

K-State was the first team left out.

 

“Our name didn’t show up, and didn’t show up, and then it went through the last region, and not seeing your name there — we were just quiet,” van Beek says. “Nobody said a word.”

 

K-State head coach Stew Burke and assistant coach Rinko Mitsunaga saw their first season in Manhattan end unceremoniously as they watched a TV screen together with their new team. They had accomplished so much in their first campaign. Burke, the former K-State assistant coach who was named head coach in June 2023 after four successful seasons as head coach at Tulane, voiced high hopes for the Wildcats from the outset. He sought immediate success. Instant results. Program-changing type stuff. K-State set multiple program records in year one. Then in a flash, the year of rebirth for the women’s golf program instantly crashed with gut-turning finality.

 

“Stew sent us to the locker room and then he walked in,” van Beek says. “He broke down. And then Rinko. And that made us all break down.”

 

She pauses.

 

“That really made us realize how much we wanted it, how much he wanted it, and what we were going to do this year,” says van Beek, who is completing her junior season. “Yeah, that moment definitely did something for this year.”

 

Tomorrow, the K-State women’s golf team will be at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, California, for its first-ever national championship practice round prior to the championship beginning on Friday. Last Wednesday, van Beek and Burke and Mitsunaga and Big 12 Women’s Golfer of the Year Carla Bernat and Big 12 individual champion Sophie Bert and the rest of the Wildcats held a “TICKET PUNCHED” sign at Keene Trace Golf Club after completing the 18^th and final hole of the final round of the 2025 NCAA Lexington Regional. The Wildcats tied for second in the regional with Georgia Southern, only behind No. 1 seed Florida State.
 
van Beek and Bernat got things rolling in the opening round of the regional as each posted a score of 2-under par 70 to begin postseason play in a tie for third place while leading the 66-player field with five birdies apiece. The duo tied for the fourth-lowest individual round in K-State’s NCAA Regional history. van Beek went even par over her first nine holes before tallying birdies on Nos. 2, 4, 5 and 7 for her eighth under-par round this season.
 
“It felt really good,” van Beek says. “I feel like I could’ve played even better than that and shot a 4-under. My game was very solid that day. I just didn’t make as many putts as I wanted. I was super focused. I knew what I had to do. It felt good.”
 
It was a shining moment, for sure, for van Beek, who flew overseas from Oene, Netherlands, in hopes of someday seeing hopes and dreams realized as a contributor on a major college golf team. van Beek points to her 3-under par 213 to tie the best 54-hole score of her career at Westbrook Invitational in February, and seventh-place finish — her first top-10 finish in 2025 and third of her career — at the MountainView Collegiate in March, as a couple of her favorite highlights this season. That is, of course, before her opening round in the regional.
 

van Beek currently ranks 10^th in school history with a scoring average of 74.06 this season, and she ranks fourth all-time with a career scoring average of 74.37, and she has a career-high three top-20 finishes this season. She shot a 70 during the final round of the Big 12 Championship to help K-State rise from 11^th to fifth overall.
 
“I had the most work to do on my mental part heading into this season,” van Beek says. “I worked with Stew and Rinko on some technical changes over the winter, and that made me a lot more consistent, too.”
 
van Beek is grateful for Burke and considers Mitsunaga “one of your best friends,” and like “a teammate that’s not playing.” No doubt the Burke-Mitsunaga duo has taken K-State women’s golf to heights unforeseen by outsiders, but accomplishable in their own minds — a 23-month trek to the table shared by blue-blood programs. Today, a Wildcat sits next to a Seminole, a Longhorn, and a Duck and a Cardinal.
 

Seem impossible? Nothing is impossible, van Beek learned at age 7. That’s when Noa’s father, Rene, sent her and Fleur, her younger sister by one year, to the golf course to hit a golf ball with a club that was even taller than them. Eventually, they took golf lessons. At age 10, Noa became a member of the Dutch National Team, where she contributed for eight years, most notably helping them to a third-place finish at the 2019 European Girls Team Championship. She also captured runner-up finishes at the 2021 Dutch National Stroke Play Championship U21 and the 2021 Dutch National Open.
 
“I realized at a very young age that I could do more than golf for fun,” van Beek says. “I said at age 10: ‘I’m going to be a professional golfer.’ I know, crazy story. But the national team put me on that path.”
 
Noa and Fleur competed, as sisters do, and they began traveling at an early age to play golf. They vacationed with their parents in Turkey and Italy and were used to being away from home. They shared everything, including a desire to compete at the highest level on a major college team.
 
“Golf was 90% of my life,” Noa says. “I don’t remember life without. Golf isn’t that big in the Netherlands, so when I told people, ‘I’m playing golf,’ they said, ‘Isn’t that for old men, rich men?’ I transferred from a regular high school to Centre for Sports and Education, and I fit in really well. The friends I had around me were all athletes.”
 
Exactly how did van Beek take that first step toward leaving the Netherlands for the United States?
 
“My dad is a big golf fan, so he knows every detail,” van Beek says. “He said, ‘That’s actually a really good idea.'”
 
There was a time when it appeared the dream wouldn’t happen. COVID hit and airlines paused flights, meaning college coaches couldn’t travel and watch prospective recruits in action, including van Beek. It also meant van Beek couldn’t travel to the U.S. to take recruiting visits.
 
“For me, it was all about the feeling, because I couldn’t do anything else other than listen to what they had to say and see pictures and videos,” van Beek says. “My visit to K-State was coaches walking around with their phone on FaceTime.”
 
But van Beek was sold on the facilities and academics and on having that “real college experience where sports are really big.”
 
“K-State,” van Beek says, “was perfect for me.”
 
Fleur, one year younger than Noa, took her own path. She just finished her sophomore season as a women’s golfer at Missouri.
 

Noa played in eight events as a freshman and finished third on the team with a 74.67 stroke average and one top-20 finish. She finished second with eight rounds of even or under par and tied for second with 88.89% of her rounds counting toward the team score.
 
Here’s what van Beek remembers most: “Every time you qualified, you were so nervous, you felt like you were playing in the national championships.”
 
The day came on May 19, 2023, that Kristi Knight, who had guided the Wildcats since the fall of 1995, announced that she would step away from her position to pursue other professional opportunities. She led the women’s golf program to all five NCAA Regionals (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2017). The national coaching search found Burke, the former K-State assistant coach under Knight, who was highly successful in four seasons at Tulane. Burke was hired on June 30, 2023.
 
van Beek is unique on this 2025 women’s golf team. She is the only women’s golfer to play under both Knight and Burke.
 
“Coach Stew created a group chat and introduced himself,” van Beek says. “Then we did a team call where he officially introduced himself and outlined his plans. From there, it started. But it felt like my freshman year all over again. I just finished my freshman year, and now we were starting again. I was kind of nervous because I wasn’t recruited by that coach, didn’t know him, didn’t know what to expect, but I did my research and knew his past achievements.
 
“That gave me a lot of trust.”
 

What did van Beek notice the most?
 
“They always have a practice plan ready,” she says. “Stew and Rinko work on it together. It’s personalized for you. They look at your stats and what you’re doing so you really know what to work on as an individual. It’s not just regular practice, either. You’re going to work on this and that. That helps us as individual golfers and as a team, too.”
 
It’s become evident in two seasons. van Beek saw her scoring average improve from 74.67 to 74.59 and she went from one top-20 finish to two between her freshman and sophomore seasons. After a fall break spent playing a golf tournament in Spain – which Burke and Mitsunaga attended – van Beek returned to Manhattan, where “we were very specific with practices and what to work on, every part, physical, technical, mental, every part we did.”
 
“We worked harder in the offseason than we do in the season because we knew it was so important to make changes and trust the process.”
 
Then came the end of last season. Then came the devastation.
 
And now, van Beek sits at the exact same sturdy dark wood table in a far corner of the Colbert Hills Golf Course clubhouse that she occupied a year ago when all this began — when K-State’s name was never called.
 
It’s a funny thing about memories. Last season’s abrupt ending seemed like a few weeks ago, yet this season’s spring opener at Puerto Rico seemed to be a couple years ago. But, alas, the Puerto Rico Classic held February 2-4 was where this climb began. The Wildcats went on to finish in third place at the Westbrook Invitational, first-place at the MountainView Collegiate, eighth place at the Yale Invitational West, second place at the Silicon Valley Showcase, and fifth place out of 14 participating teams in the Big 12 Championship.
 
van Beek still remembers the verbal jabs that she and her K-State teammates heard from passersby at the 2025 NCAA Lexington Regional — added fuel as the Wildcats rocketed to tie for a second-place finish.
 
“Every evening, Stew said, ‘Nobody wants us here,'” van Beek says. “We actually heard people talking about us all the time. We heard, ‘It’s just K-State. They’re not supposed to be here.’ We took it personally. I was like, ‘What are you talking about? We’re No. 27 in the country.’ We were there for a reason. It motivated us.”
 

This season, van Beek has helped K-State to a school-record 287.40 scoring average, nine of the top 12 team rounds in school history, and five of the top seven team 54-hole scores in school history. The 2025 Wildcats are first in school history with seven top-three finishes, and they have a school record-tying two wins to go along with a school record-tying nine top-five finishes.
 
They’re loose and ready for the big stage starting on Friday.
 
“Honestly, I always felt this moment was going to happen,” van Beek says. “I know how hard everybody works and how everybody is growing as individuals. It is the right time, the right moment, and right place for us. It feels like this is what we’re supposed to do.
 
“We are this good.”
 
She pauses.
 
“This shouldn’t be a surprise.”
 
She pauses again.
 
“This should be expected.”
 
She pauses again.
 
“We want to do the exact same as regionals. Go out and play our hearts out and try to win it. I know we can. Like, I know, people would probably say, ‘You should be happy to be at nationals.’ But we’re going there to play for a national championship.”
 
van Beek thinks back to her father, Rene, handing her a golf club for the first time at age 7 at home in the Netherlands. The golf club was bigger than her.
 

And now, Noa holds the club with confidence, carrying pride for the Netherlands and K-State on her sleeve. On Friday, she’ll walk the golf course at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, California, as a member of a proud Wildcats’ squad that is competing for its first-ever national championship.
 
“Golf has shaped me into who I am today,” she says. “I not only want to play golf as well as possible but do everything in life as well as possible. That’s something I’ll take with me forever. I became independent being far away from home. This is where I’m supposed to be. I feel like the little girl, who I was, is going on the right path and doing exactly what she wanted to do.
 
“I love the Powercat. It just feels very powerful. It feels just as powerful as the Dutch National Team. It’s almost like representing your country. I love to wear it everywhere I go — back home, at international tournaments. I proudly represent K-State.”
 
This season, K-State, left out of the postseason a year ago, in just its second campaign under Burke has pushed its way to the table with elites in one of the greatest comeback stories in women’s golf this season — and one of the greatest comeback stories in the history of K-State athletics.
 
van Beek was there. She witnessed the transition and transformation in Manhattan.
 
Now she hopes to witness even more history: A national championship.