Anastasia Carter knows she can talk to Don Bisesi about anything.

“I could probably just sit there and talk to him for an hour or two and just talk about life,” the senior golfer said. “not just talk about golf.”

Bisesi recently stepped down as the women’s golf coach, but has stayed on with the team in an honorary coaching status.

“He’s always been very encouraging to me and the whole team,” she said. “If I’m ever I feeling down I can always go to him.”

The team attended their last tournament of the fall season in Puerto Rico and Bisesi tagged along.

“(The team) still sees him,” she said. “He keeps up with us. He’s not gone at all.”

Lu Anne Howerton took over as the head coach for the team and Carter said the two coaches are different.

“He was more of almost like a father figure to me,” Carter said. “Whereas I see Lu Anne as a coach, rather than a mentor.”

Carter said the biggest difference between the two coaches is that Howerton is extremely organized and Bisesi was not.

Bisesi did everything he needed to and it never affected the way they played, but Howerton always has everything in order, Carter said.

“She is very different from the way Coach Bessisi coaches, but I think it will end up being good for us,” Carter said. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It’s been different, we’ve had to do some adjusting.”

It takes time to get to that same point of comfortability with a person, she said.

Carter started playing golf for the university her freshman year, but has played since she was five or six.

She said she always competed in summer tournaments when she was younger and was on the women’s golf team all four years of high school.

“I didn’t actually love it or want to be really good at it until my junior of high school,” she said.

Carter moved from Massachusetts to Indiana during that time and she said the level of play was much higher in Indiana.

“Indiana has a lot better golf players (than Massachusetts),” she said.  “Everyone was beating me and I didn’t like that.”

Carter worked to improve her swing and up her level of play to compete with a stronger class of golfers.

Now in her fourth year of collegiate golf Carter has succeeded in multiple tournaments and recently earned second place in the Maryville Fall Invitational.

“The course we played at, we have a really good record there,” she said. “We were just really trying to get everything down.”

Allison Koester also said the course played a part in the team’s success during the invitational, including her own first place finish.

“We always have good vibes going in (to Annbriar),” the junior said.

She said anytime the team goes to play they attempt to leave it all on the course, so their preparation for this invitational didn’t differ from their usual.

Koester said this course is her favorite course the team plays on.

“Annbriar is a links-style golf course,” she said. “I like how it’s laid out, pretty much straight in front of you. I like the style of it.”

A links style golf course is the most traditional type of course and are most often found in coastal areas.

Koester started playing golf around third grade, but did not have the opportunity to compete for a school until she started as a freshman in high school.

While there were no teams in her elementary or middle schools she would compete in the summer months.

“I like the aspect of you being able to compete individually and get your own score,” Koester said, “as well as a team.”

She said the team it is great to know even if one player did not finish the day that well, they can have the confidence to know their teammates did well.
“We want to have fun and we’re going to,” Koester said, “but we want to finish this season strong.”