For some teams, starting off on the wrong foot destroys the confidence it will have for the whole season.

But for the Penn State women's golf team, starting off in a disappointing manner is only a lesson to be learned.

On Monday and Tuesday, the women's golf team participated in the University of California-Irvine Anteaters Invitational in Santa Ana, Calif. To its dismay, the team finished fourth out of eight teams.

After the first two rounds, the team had a stroke count of 652 (325-327). The leader and overall winner of the tournament, Brigham Young, stole the lead with a stroke count of 630 on Monday.

Team co-captain Amber Weinerth remained consistent in the first two rounds of golf, shooting 79 in the first round, 78 in the second and 157 total. She had been one of three golfers participating in the tournament to shoot under 80.

As of last week, Weinerth was ranked No. 117 in the nation.

Katrin Wolfe played in the tournament as an individual, as opposed to playing with the team.

She finished 36 holes tied for seventh place. By the second round, however, she had improved her strokes by 13. Wolfe showed consistent improvement over the course of the weekend.

Despite the outstanding performance of a few players, head coach Denise St. Pierre was still disappointed with the results of the team.

"The tournament was disappointing. It was not what we expected. It was hard to get up after being off. We did not want to start with the worst performance of the year," she said.

Next weekend, the Nittany Lions will participate in the Northwestern Invite in Palm Springs, where they hope to regroup and play the game like they know they can.

The team and its head coach refuse to look at the past weekend as a fully negative experience.

"Certainly it is a positive that we can learn from this. We need to make sure they assess the situation and the decisions they made," St. Pierre added.

"If they can learn from this, it will be a positive."