Yesterday was a coronation.

The Penn State women's golf team was crowned champions of the Nittany Lion Invitational at the Penn State Blue Course. The team shot a combined three-round score of 927 to top both Washington and Yale by 10 strokes.

The queen of the Lions for the weekend was senior Evelyn Paik.

Paik displayed superb consistency as she fired rounds of 76-75-73 on her way to an eight-over-par 224, dominating the field to capture the individual championship. This was Paik's first-career individual title and she won it in convincing fashion, besting second place Lindsay Hong of Yale by five shots.

"It feels awesome, it felt really good, the home course advantage was definitely helpful," Paik said. "It's pretty sweet, I hope it's not the last."

But Paik was not happy until she knew her team had won as well.

"It's been awhile since we've won as a team, losing by one stroke doesn't feel very good," she said.

The team victory was the first for the Lions at home since 2002. Along the way were two near misses in 2003 and 2005, when the Lions fell one shot short of first place.

"The team victory definitely feels much better than the individual title," said senior and 2005 individual champion Maggie Lester. "Last year, after I won, I told all the girls I wished they were up there with me. This feels much better."

After getting off to a slow start on Friday when the Lions shot 314 and trailed Rollins College by one shot, the team turned it on the rest of the weekend, when it fired rounds of 307 and 306 to extend its lead.

Picking up their play over the course of the weekend were junior Christin Pacacha and sophomore Sara Lester, and both admitted that they didn't post their best scores on Friday. But when the weekend came, they picked it up, Pacacha shot 74-76 Saturday and Sunday to finish in a three-way tie for 9th. Sara Lester, meanwhile, shot a 78 on yesterday to give Penn State five sub-80 rounds.

"After the first round I knew that I was letting my team down," said Pacacha. "I knew that it wasn't going to help us and during the weekend it wasn't about me, it was about all of us, and to win is just amazing."

Also adding consistent scoring for the Lions were Maggie Lester who shot 78-79-79 to finish in a tie for 13th and sophomore Megan Padua who fired 77-79-79 to finish in a tie for ninth.

Head coach Denise St. Pierre was pleased with the victory, but at the same time, she sees room for improvement.

"It feels great to get it back, I would've liked to have had the defending champs [UC-Davis] here to have a crack at them, but it still feels great," she said. "Fortunately we have a couple weeks to work on some short game because this is not indicative of what we can do, we can do even better than this."