Women's College Golf Roster Management 📊
MikkelGolf.com Newsletter #22
The NCAA DI National Championships for the 23/24 season are now history. Congratulations to Stanford and Auburn on their National Championship titles!
As the seasons have concluded, let’s revisit how college coaches are building their rosters. Let’s also look for the impact of experience (Academic Year) on individual rankings. We’ll start with NCAA Women’s DI:
The categories above are: teams that made match play at Nationals, top-25 ranked teams in the final Scoreboard by Clippd rankings, and so forth. Finally, I’ve included the overall DI average for reference.
We can see that match play teams carry more players on their rosters, on average. We also see how top-50 ranked teams carry more players on their teams than teams ranked outside the top-50. The trend of better teams carrying more players is less clear in women’s golf than men’s golf. However, there’s evidence coaches at top schools take advantage of the “demand” of attending their highly ranked schools by having larger rosters. A potential benefit is having more options to pick “the hot hand” into tournaments.
What about the composition of the rosters? In men’s golf, we saw mid-season how two thirds of the increase in roster size for the best teams were made up of fourth- and fifth year players.
The composition of rosters are not as clear-cut to derive a conclusion from as on the men’s side. However, we can see how teams ranked outside the top-50 carry fewer fifth year athletes.
Does experience matter in NCAA Women’s DI Golf? Below is a chart depicting the percentage of players ranked in the top-50 and top-100 individually by academic year.
With each year of experience, the probability of being individually ranked increases. A fifth year player is about three times more likely of being ranked in the top-100 in Women’s DI Golf.
What about the National Champion roster? Let’s look at the Stanford Cardinal!
The National Champion roster had it all, looks like. Stanford obviously had immense experience is Rachel Heck and Sadie Englemann. But the freshman Paula Martin Sampedro was arguably the catalyzer. Sampedro ended ranked fifth in the country individually. She was also the top finisher for the Cardinal in the stroke play portion at Nationals (third).
My thoughts:
Experience clearly matters in Women’s college golf. This is hardly surprising, but it’s cool to see the confirming numbers on the individual side. Further, better ranked teams are carrying more players on their rosters. However, I thought we’d see a larger proportion of the increase in roster sizes coming from experience (fourth- and fifth year players), like we observed so clearly in men’s collegiate golf. I don’t think this comes from coaches being unaware of the impact of experience on their rosters. I can only speculate, but maybe fewer high-performing players on the women’s side enter the transfer portal in search of a better-ranked school. What are your thoughts?
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