After failing to qualify for the NCAA Regional as a team, Indiana women’s golf had two golfers compete at the NCAA Lexington Regional from Monday to Wednesday at Keene Trace Golf Club in Nicholasville, Kentucky.
Redshirt senior Caroline Smith and junior Madison Dabagia were selected to the Kentucky Regional during the 2025 NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championship Selection Show on April 23. Smith finished the tournament with a 2-under par 214 in ninth place while Dabagia placed 30th with a score of 4-over-par 220.
Smith finished six strokes behind champion Kansas State University senior Carla Bernat, who also won the Augusta National Women’s Amateur in early April. The ANWA is one of amateur golf’s most prestigious events, where top amateur players from around the world travel to Augusta, Georgia, for a three-day tournament. If the women make the cut, they get the opportunity to play at Augusta National Golf Club, which plays host to the Masters Tournament.
Both Smith and Dabagia got off to a slow start in the first round of tournament play. Smith and Dabagia shot rounds of 2-over-par 74 and 3-over par 75, respectively, on the 6,322-yard, par-72 course.
On the second day, the duo bounced back, each shooting rounds of even par 72. The round of 72 put Smith in a tie for 22nd place while Dabagia sat just one shot back in 29th place. Smith’s second round was highlighted by a three-hole stretch where she went birdie, eagle, birdie on the fourth, fifth and sixth holes, respectively.
In the final round of the tournament — and the final of Smith’s collegiate career — the Hoosiers were paired together.
With the opportunity to make a run in the final day of the tournament, Smith strung together a round of 4-under-par. Her bogey-free score of 68 was tied for the third best score of the day and helped propel her 13 spots up the leaderboard for a ninth-place finish at 2-under par for the tournament.
Smith’s top 10 finish was the second of her spring season, the first coming in a fourth-place finish at the Florida State Match Up on March 21-23.
But while Smith made a surge up the leaderboard Wednesday, Dabagia was stuck in neutral. She finished her third round with a 1-over-par, which dropped her back one spot on the leaderboard, where she secured a tie for 30th place. She made two bogeys and just one birdie — on the par 4 third hole — en route to her score of 73.
While Smith and Dabagia’s seasons ended with the NCAA Lexington Regional, the pair ended their seasons with the Hoosiers by marking new program records. In her second season at Indiana, Smith set the lowest single-season stroke average in program history. She averaged 73.09 strokes per tournament in her 34 rounds played across 12 tournaments. Dabagia set the second-lowest mark in the same category with an average of 73.12 strokes per tournament in her first season as a Hoosier.
