Brenna Moore made history May 16 when she won the NCAA Division II Women’s Golf Championship, becoming MSU’s first NCAA national athletic champion.
“I never felt like this would be how I’d end my college golf career at all and it is amazing,” said Moore, nursing junior. “The goal the whole time was to be consistent and I was able to do that.”
Moore said she and Jeff Ray, golf coach, never talked about winning. She just tried to take it one shot at a time.
“When you start thinking too far ahead it might cause you to mess up so I really did just try to stay in the moment,” Moore said. “I caught myself a little bit thinking about it halfway through the last round and I was like ‘No, you can’t do that now because what if you mess up from there?’ So I just tried to stay one shot at a time, honestly.”
Now that she has a national title under her belt, Moore said her next goal is simply to graduate. Moore said she used prayer to get through the end of the semester, juggling athletics with academics.
“It was very stressful,” Moore said. “My exam schedule worked out well. We got back Thursday night and I had an exam that afternoon around 1 for my nursing class because I had missed it. That ended up getting cancelled and I had to do both of my nursing exams in the same class on Monday and then I also had an exam Saturday morning before we left.”
Moore said although she never thought about winning the championship, it’s finally starting to set in that she won, fulfilling a goal of retiring University President Jesse Rogers as well, according to Athletic Director Charlie Carr.
“Your goal is always to be the best and go as far as you can, but you don’t ever think about it actually happening like it did,” Moore said. “It makes me a little emotional in a good way. I’ll be able to tell my great grandkids that they can go look up Midwestern State and see me there whenever I’m eighty years old.”
Ray said when he was recruiting her for MSU, he noticed a competitive spirit in her that mirrored his own.
“Even though I was recruiting her for golf, I watched her play basketball three or four times,” Ray said. “She was kind of mean, actually, on the basketball court. She’s a little like me. We’re not really good losers. I hate to lose and she does, too.”
Additional reporting by Matt Jobe.
[Editor’s note: University officials, including Athletic Director Charlie Carr, reported this as the first national athletic championship. However, the cycling club has won national awards. Cycling is not an NCAA sport.]