With one tournament left before the Salukis go to Terre Haute, Ind., for the Missouri Valley Conference Championships April 22 to 24, the end of the season has become a reality for senior golfers as they approach the final competition of the regular season.

“I didn’t do as good in the last tournament as I wanted to,” senior Alisha Matthews said. “I have to work on my short game; I’m a senior and it’s kind of freaking me out. It’s just now starting to dawn on me that my time here is coming

to an end.”

Both upper and under classmen contributed to the Salukis’ four wins so far this season as a team, and seniors Meg Gilley and Matthews, sophomore Cassie Rushing and freshman Ryann Gilley have five individual first-place finishes between them.

Ryann Gilley said she will not return for her sophomore season, and with three seniors graduating, the women’s golf team will lose half of the eight players from this year’s roster.

The Salukis have finished in the top three of all of their spring tournaments so far, and with the Creighton Classic starting Monday and Tuesday of next week, the team will face a familiar foe, Northern Iowa.

At the Hotels at Grand Prairie Invitational in Peoria April 6 and 7, Northern Iowa bested the Salukis by a score of 908-923 to put SIU in second place. Rushing led the Salukis with a third place overall finish, seven strokes behind Northern Iowa’s first-place finisher.

“At the end, we were only 15 strokes behind Northern Iowa,” SIU coach Alexis Mihelich said. “We did well, but we got outplayed.  We are looking forward to seeing them again next week.”