Wheeling, W. Va. – The Mountain East Conference (MEC) stretch continued for the Wheeling University Women’s Golf team this past week at the Pipesteam Classic. After the men’s team was honored with the MEC Men’s Golfer of the Week award, the Wheeling Women’s Golf team would help Wheeling Golf sweep the weekly MEC Golfer of the Week honors. Senior golfer Ella Keffer was named the MEC Women’s Golfer of the Week, after putting together another career-best effort on the course.
Keffer and the Cardinals would compete at the Pipesteam Classic, hosted by Concord, and the senior would take the top spot in the event. It was the first Invitational win for Keffer in her Collegiate career, as she put together a career-best two round score of 150 for the event. Keffer started things strong on day one, setting a new PR for the fourth time in five rounds played this season. She would shoot even, missing out on an under par performance on the final hole of the day. She was in the top spot on the leaderboard entering the second day of the event and would finish strong shooting a 78 over the final 18 holes of the event. It was the fourth time in six rounds this season that Keffer had shot a sub 80 score after she entered the season with her PR sitting at 80. She would end up beating the rest of the field by nine strokes to earn her first collegiate tournament win.
It would be a strong start that led Keffer to her first collegiate win as she started round one with a bang. She hit par on her first three holes of the event, before hitting a birdie on hole four to take her first stroke off her score. She evened out on the next hole, but got back on track with three straight pars. She birdied again on hole nine and finished the front nine at -1 as she hit the turn. She would gain a stroke on hole 10, but once again lowered her score with birdies on hole 11 and 13. With five holes to play, Keffer just had two strokes to work with in order to finish at par for the round. She was still sitting at -2 heading to hole 18, but would double to end her day at par. It was the first par of her collegiate career, and the 72 would beat her previous PR by three strokes. She finished out with the 78 on day two, but because of her strong start, she was able to easily secure the win at the event.
Ella Keffer is the fifth Cardinal student-athlete to earn Conference Player of the Week honors and the third this week. She joins Wheeling Football’s Brett Jackson and Wheeling Men’s Golf’s Sean Dobson in earning awards thus week in what was a big week of action for the department. Keffer is the first Women’s Golfer to earn Golfer of the Week honors since September 26th, 2024, when former Cardinal Nicole Lincicome won the award.
The Wheeling University Women’s Golf team returns to action on Monday, September 22nd, when they compete at the Fairmont State Invitational.