By Dylan Vazzano, TTU Sports Information
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. – Redemption, thy name is Tennessee Tech.
Heading into the 2000 Ohio Valley Conference Women's Golf Championship there was little doubt whom the favorite to claim the crown was. After all, they had done it in each of the last three years and entered the 54-hole for all the marbles excursion with a decorated roster of title-tested talent that boasted stacked resumes of all-conference accolades like you read about.
The school in question, the one marching toward an elusive four-peat and a date with history? Sorry, not the one draped in purple in gold, but rather a rowdy Racers' bunch from the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Murray State had seized ownership of the OVC during the late 90s, and in the process, asserted authority over the Golden Eagles with triumph after triumph over its fellow conference adversary. A 20-stroke victory against Tennessee Tech in the 1999 OVC Women's Golf Championship that clinched the conference's first ever three-peat headlined the list in the squad's series of successes over the Golden Eagles, and in the weeks leading up to the 2000 title event, there was even more of a reason for Racer optimism.
Murray State and Tennessee Tech met in each of the four tournaments leading up to the OVC Championship. Four events in a 30-day span, and in that quartet of competitions, the Racers edged the Golden Eagles in three of them, including the final two tournaments just prior to conference title. A second-place finish to Tech's third-place ending in a 17-team field as part of the EKU Colonel Classic in mid-April accompanied a four-stroke victory over the Golden Eagles in the club's home event, the Murray State Invitational in the beginning of the month.
Again, reason for Racer optimism, but by no means was this your typical "David vs. Goliath" story. In fact, far from it.
Tennessee Tech women's golf was an established program that proved it was one to be reckoned with. In the six OVC Championship tournaments prior to the turn of the century, the Golden Eagles had finished in first or second in four of them, highlighted by back-to-back titles in 1994 and '95.
Led by the TTU Sports Hall of Fame coach Bobby Nichols and a roster chock-full of All-OVC talent, the Golden Eagles were certainly a group that had all the makings of reaching the pinnacle again, but had simply fallen victim to a wave of Murray momentum with the Racers' recent three-peat.
If the Golden Eagles were to get over the hump and dethrone the champs, they wouldn't have to go far to do it, at least geographically speaking. The 2000 Ohio Valley Conference Championship was set in Tech's backyard, Ironwood Golf Course, right in Cookeville. The comforts of the Upper Cumberland and a veteran Golden Eagle roster with their top five players all juniors or seniors gave umbrage to the fact that Murray's four-peat was inevitable, even if the Racers did return three of the conference's four All-OVC performers from the 1999 squad that won the title by 20 strokes over Tech.
As much as ever a strong start seemed significant for the Golden Eagles, and that is exactly what they did to set the tone that things would be different in the 2000 championship. Led by Cherry Bevis' opening-round 76, the lowest first-round mark of any golfer in the field, the Golden Eagles raced out a 13-stroke advantage over the three-time defending champions. Kim Spangler joined Bevis as the only two Tech golfers with sub-80 scores in the first round, firing off an opening-round 77 to tie for the second-lowest first day score in the entire tournament.
Spangler's stellar start would serve as a welcome sight of things to come for the TTU junior out of Chattanooga, who would follow up her first-round 77 with a second-round 79 to tie fellow Golden Eagle Cindy Copeland and Eastern Kentucky's Colleen Yaeger for the day's lowest mark. More importantly, Spangler's surge helped push Tech to a second-round 324, five strokes better than Murray's 329, and at the end of 36 holes, the Golden Eagles found themselves with an eye-popping 18-stroke edge over the Racers.
With the finish line in sight entering the final day of play, Tech refused to rest on its laurels even with a sizeable lead. In fact, the Golden Eagles saved their best for last, kicking it into another gear with the title now well within reach. A combined final round 309 proved to be nine strokes better than Murray State's 318, pushing the purple and gold to the championship with a dominating 27-stroke win in the conference's grandest of stages.
Spangler capped off a sensational three-day run at Ironwood with a final-round 78 to capture the individual championship, becoming the only player in the field to shoot under 80 in all three rounds of the tournament. Junior Kylie Crouch, a future TTU Sports Hall of Famer, joined Spangler in the sub-80 department with a final-round 79, but it was the emergence of senior Ashley Beal that helped ignite Tech's charge to the championship.
After a first-round 80 and a second-round 83, the McKenzie, Tenn. product soared to the end behind a tournament-best 72 in the final round to finish in second place in the field of 25, a mere single stroke back of Spangler for the top tourney score.
Not only did Tech's dominating showing stop Murray's march at four straight championships, but the purple and gold's ascent to the top gave the Golden Eagles their third OVC title to match the Racers for the most at the time in conference history. Tech would go on to claim a second-straight crown with a 16-stroke victory over Murray State in 2001, and in the 19 conference tournaments since 2000, only one of them has featured a larger margin of victory than TTU's commanding performance in Cookeville.
Redemption, thy name is Tennessee Tech.
