Four years ago, a shift happened for the High Point University women's golf program. The Panthers were ranked 201st out of 267 teams in NCAA Division I and had finished in the top three of the Big South Championships twice in the 13 years since HPU had added women's golf for the 2004 spring season. Now, High Point has achieved a ranking as high as 107 and has finished in the top three at the Big South Championships each of the last three seasons (the 2020 championships were canceled due to the COVID-19 Pandemic), including the program's highest finish - runners-up in 2019.
 
The change? Head coach Alexis Bennett.
 
"It's been a combination of getting lucky, recruiting right-fit student-athletes, sticking together as a team and family, and pushing my players to never be satisfied or content with any given accomplishment," Bennett had to say about the program's turnaround. "My first season, I was extremely lucky to inherit two upperclassmen in Cayla and Dee who were hungry and ready for change, as well as two incoming freshmen in Samantha and Tonnie who bought into the coaching change and my way of doing things from the start. Those four really allowed me the flexibility and confidence to make adjustments where I saw fit and I can't thank them enough for their trust through the whole process."
 
Samantha Vodry and Tonrak Tasaso are two of the best golfers HPU has seen come through its doors. The duo, along with Sarah Kahn, has combined to record eight of the program's top 10 single-season scoring averages. In 2019, Vodry took home the medalist honors at the Big South Championships, becoming just the second Panther in program history to win Big South medalist honors, cementing herself as one of the program's greatest golfers.
 
Vodry has played a share of the most rounds in program history and is second in career scoring average, less than a stroke behind Kahn. The current graduate student has two wins in her career - one of just three golfers to win multiple tournaments. She leads the HPU records with 19 rounds under par and 264 birdies - 51 more than the next closest Panther - and nine eagles in her career.
 
Kahn is right next to Vodry is almost all of the team's records, entering the 2020-21 season with the lowest career scoring average with an average score of 74.53, and an average score to par of 2.58. The redshirt sophomore has 17 of her 53 rounds under par and leads the program in finish percentage, finishing better than 85.9% of opponents faced. She has 127 birdies in her two-year career to enter the season in sixth-place in HPU history and is tied for third in eagles with three to her name.
 
"Coach Bennett has done a lot of transformation with this team, even more so than she promised during the recruiting process," Kahn said of her head coach. "She has put in great effort to create an environment catered to success and holds the team to high standards on the course and in the classroom. She pushes us to keep looking towards bigger goals and provides us with an abundance of tools to do so."
 
Tasaso graduated in the spring of 2020 but left near the top of each leaderboard as well. She has the third-best scoring average and recorded seven rounds under par, good for the seventh-most. She is tied with Vodry for the most rounds played and is third in finish percentage, doing better than 69.2% of opponents, and has had 90.6% of her scores count, second only to Vodry, while also leaving the program second in career birdies with 213.
 
With the trio of Vodry, Tasaso, and Kahn, leading the charge for the past two seasons, High Point has experienced some of its best success on the course. The team has cut its scoring average by almost 20 strokes since Bennett has taken over, dropping from an average of 318.24 to 300.38. In fact, all four seasons Bennett has been at the helm are in the top-five in program history for scoring average.
 
HPU only has four rounds under par as a team, with all four of them coming in the past four seasons and two of them coming in 2019-20. The Panthers have won five tournaments as a team under Bennett's leadership, tied for the most wins by any coach in program history. Bennett has recorded a tournament title in each of the four seasons she's coached entering 2020-21 to be the only HPU coach to win titles in more than two different seasons.
 
Of the 42 categories tracked in the High Point record book, Bennett-led teams and/or players either have the lead or are tied for the lead in 33. Her teams account for 11 of the top-15 lowest 54-hole tournament scoring totals and 13 of the top 14 single-round scores.
 
The Panthers have even crept up on Big South stalwart Campbell - winners of the last four Big South Championships and six of the last eight. HPU trailed the Fighting Camels by 90 strokes the year before Bennett took over, and in 2019 cut the deficit to 28 strokes, with High Point even beating Campbell in one of the three rounds over the course of the championship weekend.
 
While Tasaso has graduated and Vodry is in her final season in the Purple and White, Bennett has set the team up for success in the future by bringing in two of the top recruits out of the Commonwealth of Virginia in Danielle Suh and Vynie Chen.
 
"This job is so reliant upon good recruiting," Bennett had to say of the tasks involved with leading the Panthers. "I think we are at a real turning point as a program and I'm excited to switch gears from restructuring mode to rise-up mode. Once we're finally able to get back out onto the golf course, I think all Panther fans will see a product and team they will be excited to root for and be able to take pride in because, in my opinion, this is the best team in High Point women's golf history and it's only going to get better from here."