NEW ORLEANS – A conference championship and top 10 national finish are accomplishments any team would be proud of. For the 2018-2019 Loyola University New Orleans women's golf team, those laurels are what made the group the first in its program's history to earn induction into the school's Wolf Pack Athletic Hall of Fame – and on the first ballot, to boot.
The Wolf Pack Athletics Hall of Fame is set for Saturday, Feb. 1. For more information, visit: https://spark.loyno.edu/hall-of-fame-2025
The team topped a field of eight – including three nationally ranked teams – to capture the Southern States Athletic Conference championship on April 10, 2019, at the Cambrian Ridge course in Greenville, Alabama. At the time the squad secured enshrinement, that conference title was the sole one in the history of the women's golf program at Loyola.
On the final stretch of that memorable three-day competition, No. 8 Loyola was matched with fourth-ranked Dalton State. Every member of the Wolf Pack shot two-over par or better on the last nine holes to nudge ahead to a 13-stroke lead, finishing +40 to secure the championship pennant.
Senior team member Daria Delfino finished second on the individual leaderboard by going four over par for 220 points. Three of Delfino's teammates scored individual top 10 finishes: sophomore Alejandra Bedoya Tobar (fifth), sophomore Madison Bates (seventh) and senior Ashley Rodgers (eighth).
Delfino and Bedoya's performances earned each of them all-tournament team selections. She and Bedoya both joined Bates and Rodgers on the all-conference team. Their teammate Callee Breland landed a spot on the league's all-freshman team. And Loyola's Drew Goff received the conference's coach of the year award to round out some of the most individual laurels that the Wolf Pack women's golf team amassed that season.
The Wolf Pack later competed in the national tournament at Oklahoma City's Lincoln Park course. Collectively, Loyola's women's golfers shot +57, accumulated 1,209 points and finished in ninth, improving on their 17th-place performance the previous year.
That result remained the best national championship tournament score – and third-best national tournament finish in program history – at the time that the team learned it would be inducted into the Hall of Fame. And it punctuated the season for a team which had collected four of the 14 tournament victories recorded by the Loyola women's golf program when the group became a first-ballot hall of fame group.
At that time, Delfino's +5, 293-point performance at nationals was Wolf Pack women's golf's best individual 72-hole tournament score and best individual overall tournament score to par. She finished tied for 13th individually. She capped off the campaign by becoming the first women's golfer at Loyola to earn a First Team All-America selection. And she was chosen for the Louisiana Sports Writers Association's all-state team, joining three women's golfers at LSU and one at UL-Monroe – meaning Delfino was the only member to not come from an NCAA Division I program.
Meanwhile, Bedoya merited a Second Team All-America nod with a +11, 299-point performance at nationals, tying her for 25th place individually.
Bedoya would later tell the Maroon that the 2019 conference championship was her "best memory." As she put it, "We worked really hard for it" – and it paid off indeed.
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