The Lady Rams golf team moved up in the rankings following their third-place finish at their tournament in Nevada in late March.

Before the Battle at Primm, named for the town where the tournament was held, the team ranked No. 13 in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. After the tournament, the team was at No. 10.

Senior sociology major Maisy Turner said that there was added pressure going into the tournament, which was hosted by Grand View College.

“For us it’s very important to do well in every tournament we play in, but this one was a little more important,” Turner said. “We were ranked the lowest we have ever been so we had to perform better than we had been playing.”

Turner said that, because the players knew how important this tournament was for them, the Lady Rams got together before their first round and made sure they were all in a positive mindset.

Turner said that beating a lot of the teams that were ranked higher than them brought their confidence back as a team.

“We have now proven that we can do it together,” Turner said.

Turner said that the team’s practices over the last couple of weeks before their tournament played a big role in their success.

“We kept our heads down at practice and focused on our individual goals and then at the tournament we all became a team and it proved that it worked,” said Turner.

Sophomore business marketing major Elena Sinde Romero feels that a lot of their success came from dealing with the mental aspect of the game.

“We controlled our nerves, our minds, and we succeeded at our goals,” Romero said.

Romero said that the mental aspect was the hardest part of the tournament, and the team dealt with it well.

“When you’re playing such an important tournament for your team, and you see you’re on the top of the classification, the mental game starts playing a big role,” Romero said, “and this is the hardest thing to control and deal with.”

Junior business finance major Alex Schies said that this tournament was different from the others because there were so many highly ranked teams.

“There were seven teams in the top 15 at this tournament,” Schies said. “You could tell in the tournament that [this tournament] was going to heavily impact the rankings.”

Schies said that the atmosphere at this tournament was very tense because every team knew how important it was to do well.

“We knew this tournament was going to make or break us going to nationals,” Schies said. “We don’t have much room to play bad like [the higher ranked teams] do.”

Schies said that the team typically plays better when they fly somewhere to compete.

“I don’t know if it’s just coincidence or if we all just take it more seriously because we think ‘Oh, we need to make ourselves look good and put ourselves on the map,’” she said.

Schies said the team just hopes to play well in the next tournament.

“We don’t want to move at all in the rankings unless it’s up,” Schies said.

The Lady Rams will play on Monday in Oklahoma City versus Oklahoma City University. For more information, go to ramsports.net.