Ivy League Sports

Golf is the Ivy League’s newest women’s championship sport, though its addition in 1997 had been preceded by individual and team competition at several institutions. Five schools currently compete for the Ivy championship: Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Penn is expected to field a formal varsity squad in 1999-2000.

Although Yale won the inaugural Ivy team championship, Princeton’s Mary Moan ’97 became the first individual champion in her senior year — a fitting honor since Moan had virtually grown up with the Princeton program. Women’s golf had been elevated from club to varsity status at Princeton in September 1991, and the team’s first official spring competition was the 1992 Yale Spring Opener. Barbara Armas ’92, who was instrumental in the move to varsity level, won that event by four strokes, shooting an 84.

A member of Princeton’s second recruited golf class, Moan recalls the program’s early years with fondness, even though there were struggles. The team usually traveled by van, for instance, but sometimes, she says, they got the one “without the cassette tape player and we couldn’t get good reception [on the radio], so we would be pretty bored. There were always books strewn everywhere. Everyone was competing for a flashlight … to read at night, or people were listening to their language tapes on headphones.”

Moan especially valued the group’s diversity. She recalls teammates including a Native American who grew up on a reservation, with the rest from New England, the Midwest, Texas, and California. “We all grew up going to different high schools or prep schools,” she says, “but we all played golf. Some of us played nationally; some of us just kind of played locally. We had walk-ons; we had recruited athletes; so it was a mixed bag. We all had a blast.”

In her four seasons, Moan won 16 Invitational titles and finished in the top five in 29 of 39 career tournaments. She qualified for three NCAA competitions, participating in the 1995, 1996, and 1997 National Collegiate East Regionals, and became her school’s first All-American in women’s golf. Moan currently is an assistant golf coach at the University of Florida and is pursuing graduate work in sports management.