University of Tennessee Athletics
LADY VOL GOLF DIARIES - VIOLETA RETAMOZA
April 25, 2003 | Women's Golf
April 25, 2003
This season, all of the Lady Vol golfers will take turns writing entries in the team's journal. Southeastern Conference Freshman of the Year Violeta Retamoza, of Aguascalientes, Mexico, is doing the eighth installment. This week, she writes about winning the Freshman of the Year award, claiming runner-up honors at the SEC Tournament and the difficulty of the final exam period.
It is the end of the year, and we all have had some unbelievable experiences. Some of them were good and some of them were bad.
Last week, we played in the Southeastern Conference Championships in Lexington, Ky. We finished third as a team, and I finished second individually. Everyone that is reading this will think "good job!" Well, we lost big time! We were leading throughout the entire tournament, but we could not hold it the last day. For me, I played well during the tournament, but on the last day, I had a bad hole (you don't want to know). That is how I lost my individual championship. At the end of the day, we all were disappointed, and a couple of hours later the only thing that I could think about was "what happened?" How did that happen? Now that I know, I need to learn from it and let it go. This experience will stay with me for a couple of months and maybe for the rest of my life, but it will be as positive as I can make it.
I think that we all learned an incredible lesson, and we are ready to take the next challenge. Now, we are ready to go to the NCAA Regionals. Because of the preparation we need for this tournament, practice is hard these days. The Regional is going to be one of the most important tournaments of this year, because this event is where we will qualify for the NCAA Championships. I give you my word that we will go to the NCAA Championships, and we will play some good golf. I think that the best strategy to do this is to play for ourselves on the golf course, and, at the end, the team score will come together.
I cannot leave this out; this is also the most difficult time of the semester in school. We have final exams and are trying to finish out the last part of the school year. We all are tired, but we have no other options. It is a good thing that we can ask for help!
Also, just for the record, I need to write about being the SEC Freshman of the Year. I feel AWESOME! There is no other way I could say it better. Also, Jessica [Shepley], my team captain, and I won the privilege of being selected to the All-SEC First Team. It feels good to receive all of these awards, because it reflects all the hard work we have put into this game.
