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Provo • If you think a bye this weekend threatens to slow the momentum of BYU's football team, imagine what the Cougars' nationally ranked women's golf team is going through.
Having won three of the four tournaments they entered during the fall semester portion of their season, including a resounding 21-stroke victory at the Rainbow Wahine Invitational in Hawaii last week, the Cougars are one of the hottest teams in women's college golf right now.
But they won't tee it up again until February of 2016 when the spring portion of their split season resumes at The Gold Rush tournament in Seal Beach, Calif.
It was easily the most successful semester for the BYU women in school history, said sixth-year coach Carrie Summerhays Roberts, daughter of former Champions Tour winner Bruce Summerhays and cousin of PGA Tour regular Daniel Summerhays, also a BYU graduate.
Despite winning in Hawaii and being one of only two programs to have won three tournaments this fall (Kent State is the other), the Cougars dropped from No. 26 to No. 28 in the Golfstat.com national rankings released Wednesday.
"It feels awesome," Roberts said of the team's spectacular fall play. "It's great to see the girls' hard work pay off. It is satisfying to be able to have such a deep team of talented players who can score well on any given day."
Roberts believes four tournament wins in an entire season (fall and spring) is the BYU women's golf record; The Cougars will chase that mark next spring with four tournaments on the docket, including their own BYU Entrada Classic in St. George, before the West Coast Conference championships in mid-April.
A combination of returning players improving their games and the addition of freshman Rose Huang, a highly recruited junior golf star from Hawaii, has propelled the team to new heights, Roberts said.
"We knew we had great players, and it just all kind of came together this fall," she said. "Rose coming to BYU just added one more great player to the mix, so if somebody has an off day, there is somebody to pick it up."
Playing on a course she grew up playing on in Wahiawa, Hawaii, Huang won medalist honors at the tournament last week, while teammate Brooklyn Anderson Hocker, a junior from Idaho Falls, placed third. Sophomore Kendra Dalton tied for eighth, TCU transfer Alexandra White placed 19th and senior Lea Garner tied for 26th.
Dalton, who is from Wake Forest, N.C., recorded back-to-back runnerup finishes at tournaments in Oregon and New Mexico before making eight birdies and posting a 7-under 65 in the final round in Hawaii.
"I think our success can be attributed to a combination of a few things," Dalton said. "Our team works super hard. I've never seen girls work harder. I also think the mental toughness helps a lot. We work a lot on being resilient so we are able to handle adversity on the course, and also handle success. When we play well, we are able to go play well again."
The team's 9-under-par 279 the final day in Hawaii tied a record set in 2006 under coach Sue Nyhus.
Huang, the 17th-ranked junior in the country in high school, is not LDS, but her father works at BYU-Hawaii and she was familiar with the Provo school's honor code and culture. She was a big get for Roberts' program.
"We were actually told about her by a professor years ago," Roberts said. "So we started following her, reached out to her, and stayed with her throughout the years, and as she moved up the ranks and got better and better, we [offered] her early and she committed. She has been a great fit."
White, the Texan, tied for second with Dalton in New Mexico and placed fourth in the season-opening Ptarmigan Ram Classic in Colorado, the first tournament the Cougars won.
"Coach Roberts has created an atmosphere where we are all really supportive of one another," Dalton said. "There are other teams where some girls aren't happy that they aren't traveling. It is not like that on our team. We push each other every day, challenge each other and when everybody wants to get along and be with one another, it makes a big difference."
And produces a lot of wins.
Twitter: @drewjay —
BYU women's golf fall highlights
• Coach Carrie Summerhays Roberts' Cougars won three of the four tournaments they entered and finished fourth in the other.
• Highly recruited freshman Rose Huang of Honolulu's Iolani School won the recent Rainbow Wahine Invitational in her return to her home state and home course.
• At the completion of the fall portion for the split-season sport, BYU is ranked 28th nationally and one of only two programs with three tournament wins.