Entering the 2024-25 school year and golf season, Saida Seelig (ʼ26) went from being a member of a five-person team the previous year to being the only Willamette women's golfer.
Seelig, a Portlander, played for a highly competitive team at Ida B. Wells High School before attending Willamette. Golfing runs in this Bearcat's blood — their grandpa and dad are both passionate players, and have shared a love of the sport with Saida for years. Upon graduating highschool, Saida’s dad had one wish for them. “My dad was like, ‘I don’t care what you do, I don’t care what you major in … I just want you to be on a collegiate golf team.’ I said, ‘Guess I gotta get grinding then.’” That grind led Saida to Willamette.
Now, the “team” aspect has been diminished. “The whole point of coming to Willamette was to be on a golf team. Now it’s like, ‘Oh, I don’t have a golf team,’” they said. Despite the downsides, Seelig feels they have benefitted from this solo fall season. Without other teammates, they have been able to get more individualized coaching. They also practice with the men’s team, which narrowly lost out on a fifth consecutive conference championship last spring. Seelig explained,“It's cool to be around the men's team because their team atmosphere is much more competitive than the women's team atmosphere was.”
So what has kept Seelig playing on a team of one? In their words, it all comes back to the passion one has to have in order to play at the college level. “It’s hard to be part of a sports team when you just don't feel the passion. That’s so much of what athletics is, is passion.” In regards to the two of their former teammates who quit this year, Seeling said: “Their passions lay elsewhere and now they have way more time to pursue those things, which I think is the healthiest way to go about it.” One of Seeling’s other teammates, Anushka Srivastav (ʼ24), graduated in the spring, and another was injured and has been unable to play.
In many ways, not having a full team doesn’t change the sport. Seelig explained: “I’m still focusing on my swing, I'm still focusing on how I manage myself around the course. So things for me haven’t really changed when it comes to competition.” But without a team score, Seelig misses out on the competitive vibe they crave. “It does make it less pressure when you don't have a team score. … I’m very competitive; I seek out that pressure, so it can be a little disappointing.”
Seelig is aware of the unique challenges to recruiting people for a women’s team in a sport that is historically male-dominated. “There's not as much fierce competition on the women's side just because historically [golf has] been a male-dominated sport. So by the time you get to college you’ve got people who aren't very competitive, or maybe they are competitive in spirit but they don’t have the scores to back it up. Or you have people who are really good and those people are gonna go to George Fox, which is the No. 1 team.”
One idea Seelig has for Willamette is the creation of a golf club. They think that it could be a great way to open accessibility to the sport and maybe even get undiscovered talent on the Bearcat radar.
Meanwhile, Seelig will be at the golf course, where they spend much of their free time when not hosting shows on KWU radio or playing the tuba for the Willamette Orchestra.
Whether or not the golf team will be able to recruit more people in the coming years remains unclear. For Seelig, “It's hard to be uncertain about the future of the program because once I go, there's a chance the program just dies. … That would suck — especially at a time when golf should be more accessible to women than ever.”
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