Kristin Glesne and Monika Poomcharoen bring tournament experience and success

By Jake Mosbach
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As the Iowa women’s golf team prepares to open its fall season on Sept. 12-13, they’ll do so with two young additions to an already youthful group.

Kristin Glesne of San Antonio and Monika Poomcharoen of Temecula, California, make up the class of incoming freshmen on coach Megan Menzel’s squad.

“I’m so excited about Monika and Kristin both,” Menzel said at the team’s picture day last week. “They’ll both be great competitors and contributors to our group going forward.”

Don’t let their youth fool you; the two bring plenty of tournament experience (and tournament success) with them. Glesne was a three-time state tournament medal-winner at Ronald Reagan High and was named the 2013-14 Texas Junior Golf Tour Player of the Year. Poomcharoen was a four-time team MVP at Great Oak High and won two Southwestern League titles in high school.

Despite ending up on the same college golf team, they come from rather different golfing backgrounds.

“I originally lived in Chicago, but when my family moved to Texas, golf became a year-round sport. So I first picked it up when I was in fifth grade,” Glesne said. “When I was a freshman in high school, my coach always asked us to push ourselves to the next level and have those goals in mind.”

Glesne said she also admired the amount of work that competitive golfers needed to put in to be successful, and her work ethic seems to fit the game perfectly.

Poomcharoen had visions of being a competitive athlete in a different sport altogether.

“I actually used to be a swimmer, but it eventually burned me out. It was my dad who said, ‘Let’s try golfing.’ That was when I was 8 or 9 years old,” she said. “I just really liked how it was such a mental game, and it was sometime in middle school that I really decided I wanted to reach D-I.”

The great coaching staff and state-of-the-art facilities at Finkbine Golf Course were some of the main draws for Glesne and Poomcharoen, as well as an immediate sense of team chemistry with the older golfers on the team.

However, Glesne and Poomcharoen also cited more interesting reasons for their choices to land in Iowa City to play golf.

“The turf is so much softer and nicer up north,” Glesne said. “Texas turf is so hard and dry, people would actually injure their wrists playing on it. The grass up north is just so much more playable.”

Poomcharoen said she had just become weary of her home state and needed fresh surroundings.

“I just really wanted to get out of California,” Poomcharoen said. “I came here, and I really liked Coach Menzel and all the girls. I’m also really loving how everything is so green here … I can’t wait to actually experience all four seasons throughout the year.

“And I’m so excited for the snow. I absolutely cannot wait to see it fall.”

Follow @realJaKeMosbach on Twitter for news, updates, and analysis of the Iowa women’s golf team.