New Hawkeye Kristi Cardwell has been playing golf since she was 5. In eighth grade, she started playing competitively. After a successful prep career, she will enter her first season on the Iowa women’s golf team as a heralded prospect.

Cardwell, from Noblesville, Ind., was the first female golfer in Kokomo High history to go to the state tournament all four years of her career, and she holds nine of 10 individual records for the school’s golf team. She also was named Indiana’s top female Pepsi Junior Golfer of the Year in 2008.

Cardwell said she decided to attend Iowa because the players and coaches were very welcoming during her official visit. The campus and downtown also appealed to her — easy to navigate, she said.

Head coach Kelly Crawford said she had recruited Cardwell for years before the golfer committed, and she sees the freshman contributing immediately.

“She’s got a great résumé. She’s very athletic and a long-ball hitter,” Crawford said. “She’s got a great personality. I felt she’d be a really good fit and also be the kind of player who’s going to make an impact and help advance this team from the very beginning.”

Cardwell has similar goals, and she also wants to be the Cal Ripken Jr. of women’s golf.

“I want to play well all season long and place well in the Big Ten championship,” she said. “I want to play all season and not miss one match.”

Those are attainable goals, Crawford said. The head coach expects Cardwell to shoot low scores as well as travel with the handful of golfers selected from the seven-women roster to play on the road.

“She seems to have a good temperament on the course,” Crawford said. “From last year to this year, she’s making better decisions on the course, and she seems to be keeping her emotions in check a lot better.”

Although Cardwell’s game has improved, Crawford wants the golfer to make even better decisions and manage the course better. Other aspects of the new Hawkeye’s game the coach will focus on are the short game and putting. Cardwell has power in tee box, Crawford said, but the coach has never seen a player who didn’t need to work on her short game.

Expectations are high for the freshman. Crawford said Big Ten Freshman of the Year honors should be within reach for Cardwell, as well as all-conference and All-American distinctions in the future.

“She came in with the school record of 74, and I came in right after with a 73,” Cardwell said. “So I beat her, and she wasn’t very happy. I kept those bragging rights for a while.”

If she has little mercy for family members, one can only imagine what she might have in store for Iowa’s opponents.