Both Panther golf teams finished their regular season tournament schedules Tuesday.

The women’s team finished fifth out of nine teams at the Loyola University Invitational at the Evanston Country Club. The team shot a combined 69 strokes over par, which was 27 strokes shy of the first place Western Illinois University Fighting Leathernecks.

The women’s fifth place finish was accomplished despite not being able to count the first round score of freshman Emily Fitzgerald, who was disqualified for not signing her scorecard.

“Usually, whenever you turn the scorecard in, the people reporting the scores make sure you double-checked and make sure there’s two signatures, but they didn’t do that yesterday,” junior Kathryn Koester said.

Fitzgerald’s first round score, an 85, would have been the third best on the team and ended up costing the team two strokes on their overall total.

The Panthers were lead by senior Veronica Bernier, who shot three over in the second-round, which tied her with two other golfers for the day’s lowest score.

Bernier’s second round was a seven stroke improvement over her day one result. Bernier said it was no mystery as to why she did better on the second day of play.

“The first time I played the last three holes five over. This round I actually kept it together,” said Bernier, who said bad shot led to bad shot during her day one collapse.

Besides Bernier, two other Panthers finished in the top 20 of the field. Koester tied for 18th with an 18 over par. Sophomore Lauren Williams tied for 20th with a 19 over par.

Both Koester and Williams had a distinctly good and a distinctly bad round, though neither at the same time.

Koester shot a 5 over par, just four strokes off of the best round of the day, on Monday, but shot 13 over par on Tuesday.

“It’s nice to see I can finally shoot in the 70s again,” Koester said of her Monday finish.

Williams shot just two strokes off of Tuesday’s low round with a five over par, but it wasn’t enough to make up for her Monday result, where she shot 14 over par. Williams said putting was what determined her scores. Williams said her putting got better when she stopped worrying about whether it was perfect. She hopes to maintain that mindset for the rest of the year.

The men’s team finished 15 of 18 teams at the Arkansas State Intercollegiate at RidgePointe Country Club in Jonesboro, Ark.

The competitors were scheduled to play two rounds on Monday and the final round Tuesday, but the weather changed the scheduled plans. Heavy storms postponed the start of play on Monday for several hours. Play also had to be stopped abruptly due to lightning in the area for an hour. They were able to finish the first round before nightfall, so the second round was canceled.

For the first time this year, the Panther with the best tournament was sophomore Tommy Ponce. He finished with a four over par, which put him in a tie for 50th place among individuals.

Going into the tournament, Ponce had the second worst average round total on the team at 79.7 in just 10 rounds played all year. In collegiate golf, only the players with the top four scores are counted toward the team’s total, and Ponce said feels he is on the cusp of making that cut more regularly then he has so far this season.

“There are only 3-4 people who consistently play,” said Ponce. “I feel like I can be one of those people. I just haven’t proven it yet.”

Ponce had the most consistent tournament on the team, shooting 2 over par each round. Ponce shot three birdies in each round to partially erase his three bogeys and a double bogey in the first round and his five bogeys in the final round.

Junior Gino Parrodi, who led the team in last week’s tournament, finished with a 4 over and tied for 62nd along with junior David Lawrence and several other players.

Lawrence also had an uneven tournament, although he did better in the first round than the second. He said his problems were in his putting stroke.

“It all came down to putting the ball in the hole,” said Lawrence. “Rather have that now than at conference.”

Lawrence failed to tally any birdies while shooting five bogeys Tuesday, giving him a 5 over round and a 6 over tournament.

The finish is among the team’s worst on the season, a season that has seen the team finish in the bottom half of the competition 6 times out of 9 tournaments.

“We’re closer than the finish shows,” said Lawrence. “We have the scores we need, we just don’t have them in bunches.”

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