A Quiet Steadiness: How Manon Achieved Excellence

Manon Tounalom was walking up the ninth fairway at The Players Club when she officially heard the news.

She and her Ball State women's golf teammates knew something was coming. They just weren't sure exactly what it was. Things were changing by the minute as fears of the COVID-19 outbreak grew. Professional sports leagues had started shutting down. At the college level, conferences were suspending competition.

With uncertainty in the air at practice that Thursday afternoon, head coach Katherine Mowat awaited word on what would happen with college golf. She encouraged her team to just get out on the course and play a couple holes.

So off they went off in two groups to play the first and ninth holes which run parallel near The Players Club's practice facilities. They didn't even finish before the heartbreak came.

As Tounalom made her way toward the ninth green in the first group, Mowat approached to show her a message on her phone. There it was. The season was over. The NCAA had canceled all championships for the rest of the academic year in every sport, and the Mid-American Conference had canceled the rest of its regular season and championship events across the board.

"I just started crying," Tounalom said. "Then I saw Liz (Kim). That caught my attention because her eyes were all watery. I'd never really seen her like that. We just hugged really hard. When the next group came up, they all saw my face and came up and hugged me. With one look they knew what was up."

Through it all, we are family. We didn't know this would be our last practice. We are heartbroken, especially for our senior; she didn't know she had played her last round #chirpchirp #wefly pic.twitter.com/ZQisbKgrc3
— Ball State WGolf (@BallStateWGolf) March 12, 2020

Tounalom and her teammates were supposed to be in Stow, Ohio, this weekend. One of the best ever to tee it up for Ball State would have been making her final appearance at the MAC Championships, looking to put an exclamation point on a distinguished career. And the Cardinals, already with a win and two third-place finishes on their season resume, would have been looking to make some noise as a team.

Tounalom will likely still be on a golf course somewhere this weekend, weather permitting. That's what golfers do. And golf has been one recreational activity still permissible in many areas in the current environment. But instead of northeast Ohio, she will be here in central Indiana where she has remained to wait out the pandemic.

It won't be nearly the same. She won't have all of her teammates with her. There will be no grand prize to chase. And her parents, who were scheduled to make the trip from France, won't be there to watch her compete.

It was all so hard for Tounalom to accept at first, before everyone knew the complete extent of what was happening with the virus. In the weeks since everything came to an abrupt halt, she has managed to put it in proper perspective.

"I just think there are worse things now," she said. "I really thought at first, 'Why is everything against me? What are the odds that this would happen my senior year?' It's hard to think this week would have been officially my last conference tournament. I wish I would have been out there and fought for my team one last time, but I'm just taking a big step back on everything. There are worse things in life."

Like she learned to do on the golf course, Tounalom is taking the adversity in stride. As Mowat says, dealing positively with the inevitable negative emotions during a round is the biggest improvement Tounalom has made in golf. She always had the game. That was clear just from watching her swing videos during the recruiting process.

Recruiting internationally presents challenges for both the coach and the student-athlete. Mowat didn't see Tounalom play in person, and Tounalom never set foot on campus until she enrolled. But Mowat knew her young recruit had the ability to contribute, and the two built a relationship over Skype. Mowat had landed Zoe Camus, another French player, from the same European recruiting connection several years earlier, so she had a good feeling about it.

Tounalom was thrown into the fire early after arriving from Buchelay, France, about 45 minutes west of Paris. She competed in every event as a freshman for a team that had talent but was short on numbers. She flashed signs of her brilliance, including a round of 68 at the Dr. Donnis Thompson Invitational in Hawaii. It still ranks as the second-best score in program history.

Yet during that season and even the next, as she emerged as the team's top player, she had to master the internal game that goes on inside the minds of all golfers.

"The one area where we saw the most growth with her is how she'd handle her thoughts during a round," Mowat said. "At times she could get consumed with being nervous and not hitting it well, the 'How am I going to ger through this round?' thoughts. By the end, the transformation was remarkable. When I'd approach her and she was struggling, she'd say, 'I'm not playing well right now, but I'll be fine.' She believed it, and I believed it. I'm not sure I've coached a player who has gone through that kind of transformation."

With her confidence blossoming, Tounalom just got better and better. She was dedicated to her craft, energized by the opportunity to practice every day, and she had what Mowat describes as a "grit and grind" to her game. She learned to compete. No longer able to rely on seeing her swing coach regularly as she did back in France, she was forced to figure out on her own how to get the most out of what she had each day.

She stacked up one quality round after another. As a sophomore, she led the Cardinals in nine out of 11 tournaments. As a junior, she had five top-15 finishes and lowered her stroke average to a career-best 75.85. As a senior this year, she led a deeper BSU team in scoring average for the third consecutive season.

Almost quietly, it all added up to one of the best careers in program history. Only Brittany Kelly's 76.43 career scoring average is better than Tounalom's 76.89 in the BSU record book. Tounalom also owns three of the top seven single-season scoring marks in school history.

Manon Tounalom

But perhaps most impressively, and what speaks loudest to her consistent excellence, is the fact that she provided a counting score in 94 percent of her career rounds (college teams throw out the worst of their five scores each round). And over the past two seasons, she was a counter in every round she played.

"It's unbelievable just the kind of quiet steadiness she had for four entire years," Mowat said. "She's shown tremendous strength and resilience. She always found a way to show up and compete, and I know she was always led by her passion for the game of golf and her commitment to her teammates and this program. That was always unwavering."

At the same time Tounalom's game was on the rise, so was her level of responsibility within the program. Not only did she quickly become the No. 1 player, but she also went from the team's only freshman to its only upperclassman in the span of two years. She was the only junior on a team with no seniors in 2018-19, and she was the lone senior this year.

It's a role the team captain relished, trying to bring everyone together, to make everyone feel included, heard and understood. She knew her teammates relied on her. "They are my teammates," she said, "but most importantly they are my friends first."

"I look to her for a lot both personally and athletically," Kim said. "She has taught me a lot about leadership. She's also taught me about handling the bad rounds, evaluating afterwards and making the necessary changes. She is never one to freak out or worry about a bad round. She's such a competitor and one of the best to be a Ball State Cardinal."

Manon Tounalom

It has been quite a career for a player who, admittedly, didn't know much about college golf or college life in general when she arrived in Muncie four years ago. She didn't know how big the campus would be. She didn't really comprehend the college golf structure. And she had no idea the kind of opportunities she would have to compete on top-notch courses.

But she took to the competition quickly, and she took to the academics quickly. Tounalom chose a major in finance and excelled in that, as well. Once this year's awards are handed out, she will be a three-time WGCA All-America Scholar and a three-time Academic All-MAC selection. She carried a 3.62 GPA into her final semester, she will graduate next week, and she will embark on an MBA degree in the fall.

For someone from half a world away who had never even heard of Ball State, Tounalom almost bubbles over when talking about her school. From her success on the golf course and in the classroom to the relationships with her teammates and others on campus, she has more than made the most of her opportunity.

Even if circumstances prevented her from finishing it off the way she would have liked, Tounalom's career will long be remembered in the annals of Ball State women's golf.

"I just have so much gratitude toward coach who recruited me and who gave me the chance to be here and also for such a good golf program," she said. "I have been lucky to have some great people around me. I've probably met some of the most important people of my life here at Ball State. I'm very grateful for what I've had the chance to do."

Players Mentioned

Manon Tounalom

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