May 5, 2005

BY TIM PEELER

RALEIGH - Nancy Mountcastle may have never picked up a golf club if her dad hadn't suffered an unfortunate shoulder injury. Until then, when she was 11 years old, the Mountcastles were a tennis family.

But Nancy and her parents switched to golf when Vernon Mountcastle came back from his injury, a decision that is paying dividends now for the Wolfpack women's golf team.

"I love playing golf now," Mountcastle said. "I knew I wanted to play in college." It wasn't exactly an easy road. Mountcastle grew up at Treyburn Country Club in Durham and attended Durham Academy, which does not field a girls golf team. For four years, she was a member of the boys varsity team. As a senior, she was the team's captain.

But playing at a small private school with no girls team did not lead a lot of college coaches to Mountcastle's door. She met and got to know both Wolfpack coach Page Marsh and North Carolina women's coach Sally Austin.

Marsh remembers seeing Mountcastle while recruiting someone else and thinking "Wow, where has this girl been?"

"You could tell she was an athlete," Marsh said. "And she had a great attitude, and we started recruiting her."

Technically, Mountcastle came to NC State as a walk-on because there were no scholarships available. She played in all four junior varsity events as a freshman, earning herself a scholarship and a shot at playing on the varsity, especially after a productive summer.

She qualified for match play at both the Trans National Amateur Championship at Glenmore Country Club in Keswick, Va., and at the Women's North and South at Pinehurst. At the Trans, she shot a career-best 69 to share the lead after the first round of medal play and finished 11th overall in medal play. At the North and South, she upset legendary amateur Carol Semple Thompson, the event's No. 16 seed, in the first round of match play, 3 and 2.

She credits her improvement to the extra time she spent working on her short game. To get a more exact feel for her game, she took 100 yards of string, tied a ribbon every 10 yards, then got her mom to shag balls as she taught herself how far she needed to bring her wedge back for certain distances.

"I tried to practice hard and play hard all summer long," Mountcastle said.

So now, as the Wolfpack begins play in the NCAA East Regional at the University Golf Club in Gainesville, Fla., Mountcastle is settled in as a regular contributor for the Wolfpack. She has played in seven of the nine varsity events this year, twice finishing in the Top 20. Her best finish of the year came in last weekend's ACC Championship, when she tied for 13th place, four strokes behind All-ACC teammate Ashlee Dean, as the Wolfapck finished in a tie for third place as a team with Virginia.

"I saw her potential when I saw her play in high school," Marsh said. "But she is the one who acted on it and improved her game. She has a tremendous upside. You can just see her progress in just two years here."

You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.