NCAA D1 Women's Golf Rosters

MikkelGolf.com newsletter #16

This week, let’s dig into NCAA Women’s Division 1 - specifically the rosters.

In the same way as I did for the men, I’ve scraped the Scoreboard powered by Clippd player directory and organized the data. In contrast to what I did for the men a few weeks ago, I have not looked at the actual rankings yet, as we’re so close to the end of the collegiate season. I intend to include the rankings and look for correlations between Academic Year and individual success, as well as team rankings and roster management once the season is over with. I will do that for both Men’s D1 and Women’s D1, so stay tuned to this Substack by subscribing!

You can find the article from a few weeks ago on the men’s data HERE.

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Rosters

According to the Spikemark player directory, there are a total of 2,308 players in NCAA Division 1 Women’s Golf this year. 58 of them are missing information about their Academic Year. Let’s look at how the rest of the players are distributed per Academic Year:

As we can see, the First Year and Second Year classes are just about equal in size across the division. However, there’s a drop-off in Third Year athletes, followed by a considerable drop-off in Fourth Year athletes. The Fourth year drop-off is similar to Men’s Golf. From there, there seems to be a difference in Fifth Year players between Men’s and Women’s D1 golf. It looks like a larger share of athletes choose to use their Fifth Year on the Men’s side. Below is the Men’s chart from the last article:

According to the Women’s golf directory, there are 277 teams in Division 1, with an average of 8.33 players on each rosters. Men’s Division 1 teams average 9.80 players per roster. The team in Women’s D1 with the most players on their roster is the University of California, Irvine, with 14 players. On the other end, the University of the Incarnate Word has the least players on their roster, with only 4 players.

At the midway point of the season in Men’s Golf, we saw how the top-ranked teams carried more players on their rosters, and that two thirds of the increase in roster size on these teams were made up of Fourth- and Fifth Year players. We also saw a clear correlation between Academic year (experience) and individual rankings. Again, I intend to do the same analysis for Women’s Golf once the season is over, but for now, let’s look some more into common roster sizes.

Below is the distribution of roster size across D1 Women’s Golf:

As we can see, the most common roster size is 8 (27% of teams). Approximately two thirds of the teams carry 7, 8, or 9 players.

Name Trivia

On the Men’s side we saw how the most common first name for a Men’s D1 college golfer is first name Jack, last name Smith. What do you think are the most common names on the women’s side? As Jack Nicklaus holds the most Major Championships on the Men’s side, will Patty (Patty Berg 15 Majors) top the list?

Well, here you go:

Smith was the most common last name on the Men’s side. Here are the top ten most frequent last names on the Women’s side:

Are there players who share a name in division 1? Below are all the player names who appear on multiple rosters. These could be players who share a name, or they could be players who have for example transferred and therefore incorrectly show up on two rosters. I don’t have perfect insight into the women’s college golf world and am not able to validate 100%, but here they are:

• Brooke Frerichs

  • Lamar University

  • Mercer University

• Brooke Oberparleiter

  • University of Kentucky

• Brooke Patterson

  • Boise State University

  • University of Cincinnati

• Danielle Suh

  • High Point University

  • Washington State University

• Ellie Frisch

  • University of Wisconsin-Green Bay

• Emily Odwin

  • Southern Methodist University

  • University of Texas

• Lauren Gilchrist

  • Middle Tennessee State University

  • Murray State University

• Madison Le

  • California State University, Long Beach

  • University of Texas at Arlington

• Morgan Rodgers

  • Ohio University

• Morgan Ryan

  • University of Wyoming

• Morgan Smith

  • Georgetown University

• Morgan Taylor

  • Howard University

• Sandra Menes

  • Georgia Southern University

  • Jacksonville State University

• Silka Solomon

  • Campbell University

  • Georgia State University

• Sophie Anand

  • Auburn University

  • Texas Christian University

• Varnika Achanta

  • University of Cincinnati

  • University of Hawaii at Manoa

Nickname conundrum?

The teams with the most players sharing the same first name are Howard University and the University of Denver, each with 3 players sharing a first name. At Howard University, the shared first name is "Morgan," and at the University of Denver, it's "Anna.” I’m sure there are some creative nicknames on these teams!

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Enough fun-facts for now - stay tuned by subscribing to see what correlations we can find between Academic Year and roster management once the season is over. Best of luck in the post-season to all the Women’s Golf teams out there!

If you’d like to support my work further, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. In addition to supporting my writing and website work, paid subscribers get access to all of the player development tools on www.mikkelgolf.com. The tools available include a library of performance drills and on-course formats, plus an on-course stats system designed to improve approach play and putting. Five division one golf programs currently use the stats portal. Reach out for more details if you’re interested!

Have a fantastic week!

Best,

Mikkel Bjerch-Andresen

Golf Coach & Analyst

Oslo, Norway