Internationals Spark Women’s Golf Heading To ACC Championships

For many international students, their time at Carolina is a first taste of American life. They may have never primarily communicated in English, and their only knowledge of UNC is the campus was Michael Jordan’s and Mia Hamm’s collegiate stomping grounds. The academic load can be difficult to navigate, especially considering the rich social and extracurricular scenes that dominate students’ free time. 
 
International student-athletes have additional responsibilities to manage; they must work through the challenges a new culture presents while practicing and playing a competitive and demanding sport each week.
 
Despite those challenges, Carolina women’s golf coach Aimee Neff knows her team is up to the task. Six of the nine players on the roster originate from outside the United States.
 
This week, UNC’s lineup in the 2023 Atlantic Coast Conference Championships includes senior Kayla Smith, a native of Burlington, N.C., and five internationals – first-round starters Krista Junkkari, a senior from Elimäki, Finland; Crista Izuzquiza, a junior from Madrid, Spain; Megan Streicher, a freshman from Boland, South Africa; and Vilde Nystrøm, a freshman from Stavanger, Norway; and Natalia Aseguinolaza, a junior from San Sebastian, Spain, who is the alternate and could sub in a later round.
 
Junkkari leads UNC this season in stroke average at 72.59 and is third all-time at Carolina (Smith is UNC’s career stroke average leader at 73.43). Streicher is third this year at 73.88 and has been Carolina’s top finisher in two of the last three stroke play tournaments and Izuzquiza has played even par in her last three starts, which included a career-best tie for 10^th in Athens, Ga.
 
Neff says the international movement in women’s college golf started with Dan Brooks, the longtime head coach at Duke, where he has led the Blue Devils to seven NCAA titles. Neff says Brooks began to recruit international players in the late 1990s after seeing how many talented prospects overseas were being overlooked.
 
Neff credits part of this international movement to the national team experience almost all international golfers receive from a young age. Outside of the U.S., countries have youth national golf teams and golf academies that allow players to focus solely on golf and travel to tournaments across the world. That single-sport focus on golf…