On May 13, the No. 8 Oregon women’s golf team finished No. 7 out of 12 teams at the NCAA Waco Regional and failed to make the final cut to advance in the tournament. The Ducks were the second-highest-ranked team heading into Waco, only behind No. 4 Texas A&M University, which finished second. Oregon was the highest-ranked team competing in all of the regional tournaments to not advance to the NCAA National Championship.

The Ducks finished two strokes back from a qualification spot with a total score of nine over par, with Kiara Romero and Sophie Han leading the team with scores of five under and one over par. The team was held back by poor outings from Darae Chung (+8), Tong An (+9) and Karen Tsuru (+11).

This mediocre result was the cherry on top of an expired sundae that lost its flavor months ago after Oregon went on a skid starting in April, when the Ducks finished No. 3 at the Chevron Silverado Showdown. Now, a third-place finish would seem like a very acceptable result, considering the winner of the tournament was No. 2 USC. The glaring issue was the fact that Oregon finished 38 strokes behind USC and 16 strokes behind No. 26 Eastern Michigan University.

Another catalyst in the Ducks’ April skid was the absence of their biggest stars, Romero and Karen Tsuru. The pair were competing in the Augusta National Women’s Amateur across the country while all of the Trojan players, including No. 5-ranked amateur women’s golfer Jasmine Koo, competed for their team.

The absences didn’t stop there for Romero, who skipped out on the Big Ten Championships two weeks later to compete in the LPGA Chevron Championship, where she didn’t make the final cut.

This all goes to show that Oregon could struggle to contend for national championships if its own stars choose to focus on their professional careers during the collegiate postseason. Head coach Derek Radley has been able to keep the program competitive in his eight seasons with Oregon and is currently under contract through the end of the 2029 season. It would be unreasonable to say his job should be in question, given the Ducks have been a top team the last eight years, but the clear lack of loyalty to the program from star players puts his leadership in question.

Continuing to draw parallels to USC, who have been one of the nation’s most elite programs, their head coach, Justin Sil- verstein, has been able to have star players like Koo put their team’s needs over their own ambitions. Silverstein has been the head coach for eight seasons, but was an assistant coach when the program won the 2013 national championship.

Overall, the Ducks’ season has been less than stellar, considering how strong they started off. The main thing the team needs to focus on is consistency and evaluating how they can prepare the younger core to step up when their time comes.