The women’s golf team looked to improve on their first two competitions this season after nearly three weeks without an official tournament,

Minnesota finished the Betsy Rawls Invitational Tuesday in eighth place out of 14 teams in Austin, Texas.

The Gophers scored 299 in the first round, 307 in the second, and 291 in the third, which totals to 33-over-par. The third-round score was only 3-over-par, a 16-stroke improvement on the second round.

“I think the first two rounds we were trying to force it,” said junior Sabrine Garrison. “We worked a lot on staying patient.”

The Gophers significant improvement came in almost all the player’s individual scores, too.

Senior Emie Peronnin was Minnesota’s top golfer at the tournament, and her scores per each round were 74 in the first, 76 in the second and 70 in the third. At 2-under-par, she had a 6-stroke improvement in that round from the second.

Garrison shot a 72 in the final round, a 6-stroke improvement on her third round score.

Junior Heather Ciskowski shot 73 in the third round, which was a 4-stroke improvement on the second.

The entire team practiced a lot over the break from tournament play, head coach Michele Redman said, and one thing that was prevalent in everyone’s routine was putting.

“It really does come down to putting,” Redman said. “The more we practiced it, and the more we practiced it properly, the more I think that’s really going to help us.”

Redman wasn’t finished praising her team, applauding their ability to improve and finish higher in tournaments.

“They listen on the golf course,” Redman said, “They’re eager to get better, and they’re always giving me 100 percent.”

Finishing strong in a tournament is one thing that is harder to simulate in practice, but that skill did not escape Peronnin this week.

The senior golfer finished in the top-20, tied for 16th place at the tournament Tuesday.

“It’s really nice [to finish in the top-20],” Peronnin said. “I had been playing pretty well at practice for the past couple of weeks, so I knew I had the ability to do it.”

The overall tournament champion this week was Kent State, which finished with a score of 862, 2-under-par. The overall individual tournament champion was Miami sophomore Dewi Weber, who had a score of 201, 15-under-par.

The Gophers look to carry the momentum from this tournament to their next, which starts on Oct. 23.

“We’ve been really close the last two tournaments,” Garrison said. “We’ve just been waiting for us all to have a good day and have our putts drop.”