Monday afternoon, Junior women’s golfer Emily Calhoon did not know how her team had placed in the Saluki Invitational Tournament in Carbondale, which wrapped up Monday.

“We normally stay to find out what place we get,” said Calhoon. “But we played pretty bad today so our coach just wanted to leave.”

The team finished 12 of 14 after a disappointing round two in which Eastern shot four strokes worse than in round one. They were only one of two teams not to score better on the second day of the tournament.

The other team who did not improve the second day were the tournament hosts, the SIU-Carbondale Salukis, who added a single stroke to their day one 319 result, giving them a total of 639. For sake of comparison, Eastern finished a full 47 strokes behind Carbondale. The Salukis were also the only team to have all of its members finish among the 40 best individual scores.

Eastern’s lone top 40 individual finisher was Calhoon, who was not content with her performance.

“I struggled both days,” Calhoon said.

She finished with a 167, which was three strokes ahead of the next best Panther, junior Kathryn Koester. Calhoon was one of only three players of Eastern’s team to improve their scores in the second round. She said the reason for improvement was because she did not hit the ball out of play at all Monday after doing it three times on Sunday.

“The course is very narrow,” freshman Elyse Banovic said. “It’s a difficult course that was hard to play.”

Banovic showed the most improvement from Sunday to Monday, shooting seven strokes better. Despite the rapid improvement, Banovic finished 83rd of individual golfers.

“I pitched a lot better getting on the green,” Banovic said. “I was short a lot (Sunday) and I did better with my distance (Monday).”

Senior Veronica Bernier said the team must improve tremendously before their next tournament. Bernier, the team’s lone senior, shot third best on the team, and tying the mark for 61st overall with a 174.

Calhoon said the entire team needs to play better and practice hard in the coming weeks.

“We all struggled at this tournament so we are all going to practice really hard,” Calhoon said. “We really need to start shooting good scores.”

The women’s team will play next at the Loyola Invitational at the Evanston Country Club in just under two weeks on Sunday April 10. It will be their last tournament before the OVC Championship at Greystone Golf Club in Dickson, Tenn. on April 20.

Doug Graham can be reached at 581-7944 or at dtgraham@eiu.edu