CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. — The postseason accolades continued to roll in for KiaraRomero on Wednesday as the Oregon women’s golf star was announced as a co-recipient of the 2023-24 Division I WGCA Freshman of the Year Presented by StrackaLine.
Romero received the honor along with Stanford’s Paula Martin Sampedro, and was also one of five players named to the inaugural Division I WGCA All-Freshman Team.
Romero is the first Duck ever to be named the WGCA Freshman of the Year, after joining Paula Patterson (1996-97) as the only players in program history to be a first-team all-American last week.
A first-team all-Pac-12 selection, Romero shattered Oregon’s single-season record for scoring average with a stellar 70.84 mark across 31 rounds of stroke play. She became the first Duck ever to shoot under par across a 72-hole tournament while leading Oregon at the NCAA Championships, tying for sixth overall in stroke play at 4-under par.Romero went 2-0 in match play at the NCAA Championships as the Ducks advanced to the national semifinals. Both of her wins came against top-50 ranked opponents, including a top-10 ranked player in UCLA’s Zoe Antoinette Campos in the semifinals, and her 1 up victory against LSU’s Aine Donnegan clinched Oregon’s quarterfinal win.Romero also broke Oregon’s single-season record for birdies with 118, and she owns two of the 16 lowest individual rounds in program history. Her 7-under 65 in the final round of the Pac-12 Championships is tied for the third-lowest round ever by a Duck, and her 6-under 66 in round two of the NCAA Championships is tied for the 10th-lowest.A native of San Jose, Romero claimed two individual wins – in her collegiate debut at the Annika Intercollegiate and at the San Diego State Classic – and finished in the top 10 in six of 10 tournaments while posting nine top-20 finishes.Romero shot par-or-better in 24 of 31 rounds as a freshman, and her 6-under 66 at the NCAA Championships was her eighth sub-70 performance. She ended the season as the No. 6 ranked player in the country while rising to No. 28 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings.
