One third place finish in the NCAA Championships is good. Back-to-back third place finishes in the national championships is outstanding.

That's where the LSU women's golf team under Coach Karen Bahnsen finds itself after the best combined finishes of any women's golf team in the country the last two years.

After a 2011 season that saw then freshman Austin Ernst sink the last putt on the 18th green on the final day of the NCAA Division I Women's Championships that gave her the individual championship and the team its program best third place finish, 2012 would prove to be as good if not better.

While Ernst could not repeat her individual title in 2012, senior Tessa Teachman was in the battle for the individual title until the end of the event, finishing third. The LSU team on the final day would play its best golf, shooting a 1-over 289 at the Vanderbilt Legends Club with the team posting a combined 9-under par on the ninth and 18th holes.

LSU posted its number first and watched as its 21-over par score would finish just two shots out of the winning score of Alabama as the Lady Tigers again put itself in the middle of women's college golf's national spotlight.

The last two years has seen LSU accomplish more than any team 33-year history of the program that began in the 1979-80 season with a certain coach as its first recruit. In that time, the LSU women's team has gone from a team that had to go to the LSU Bookstore to buy matching shirts to a team that had an individual NCAA champion and a team bringing home a big NCAA trophy each of the last two years.

The 2011-12 LSU team also showed its prowess during the regular season, winning four tournaments (including a tie for first in the NCAA central Regional), making it one of the best seasons in program history and the Tigers advanced to the NCAA Championships for the 12th time, 11 times under Coach Bahnsen, including three of the last four years and 10 times in the last 17 years.

The Coach has had a lot to smile about since Buddy Alexander handed her the keys to the LSU women's golf program prior to the 1984-85 season. The enthusiasm and competitive nature that Bahnsen showed then is the same enthusiasm and competitive nature that she shows today.

Now, she will try to get another team ready for post-season play. The memories of the past two years are pleasant and easy to remember, but now she is ready to direct another golf adventure for the Lady Tigers. It's one she hopes will take her team back to the Championships, but she knows it will be one filled with lessons learned that will make her team better at the end of the journey.

She has had the drive, the determination and a willingness to succeed ever since she was playing at LSU in the early 1980s, joining the fledgling program as its first signee. One can also say that those who have succeeded in this program are those that understand the same drive, determination and willingness to do whatever is necessary that Bahnsen preaches.

Bahnsen knows what it takes to get to the pinnacle of women's collegiate golf - the NCAA Women's Championship Tournament. She will ask her team to work hard and respond to the challenge, but it will be nothing less than she ever asked of herself as a player. If the player accepts and understands, success usually follows.

Now that message is being spread farther thanks to those who have worked and played for her. Two former assistants - Marci Kornegay (South Florida) and Golda Borst (Kentucky) are now head coaches. Ashley (Winn) Tonore, who played for Bahnsen in 1995-98, served for several years as the Director of Golf and head women's coach at ULM. Former player Alexis Rather has also joined the coaching fraternity in her fifth year as an assistant and her third at LSU.

Over the years Bahnsen has come up with a simple philosophy that she started using as a player. It's so simple, but so amazingly effecting when put into play. She wants her team to play each shot as a separate event. If something bad happens, forget it and move on. Don't let it carry on for four or five holes. Most of all, she wants her players to have fun.

Bahnsen's love and desire for a program she has devoted over half her life is what also gives her a smiling satisfaction about a program she has virtually helped design from scratch.

Plus, all these years of coaching have done nothing to slow her down. In fact, she is more energized than ever to make the program a continuing contender in the national spotlight.

How many programs are there in any sport in Division I intercollegiate athletics where the program's first recruit goes on to become the head coach of the program and stays long enough to not only be the dean of league coaches in the sport, but also one of the longest tenured coaches in school history?

But she's not just going through the motions. A season with an individual national champion and third place team finish tell you that. She is one of the most respected individuals in the game today, not just in the SEC but in all college golf circles. That is why she was inducted in December 2008 into the National Golf Coaches Hall of Fame.

She has also done a fabulous job of changing as women's golf changed. Since her arrival at LSU in 1979, the sport of women's golf has risen in talent and stature to the point that SEC championships and national championships are decided by mere strokes instead of one or two teams dominating a field.

Bahnsen has contributed her share of names to the list of SEC stars in her years as head coach. There was the nation's No. 1 player, Jenny Lidback, in the mid-1980s, who led LSU to the NCAA Championship Tournament and then went on to become a major tournament winner on the LPGA Tour. Also, from the 1980s, came Jackie Gallagher, a steady player who had a long and successful career on the women's tour.

The "Three Amigas" signaled a new era in LSU women's golf in the mid-1990s when the highly recruited Ashley Winn, Michelle Louviere and Laura Moore led LSU to a succession of NCAA appearances (including a program best fifth place finish in 1998), a No. 1 ranking and nine tournament titles.

Katy Wilkinson-Harris ended the 1990s with bookend All-American performances in her freshman and senior years. The 2000s opened with Shreveport's Meredith Duncan bringing LSU national recognition by winning the U.S. Women's Amateur title and helping her country keep the Curtis Cup in matches with Great Britain and Ireland.

Now a sensational career in college golf has ended and another one is a smashing success in its first year. Megan McChrystal earned All-American honors for the third straight year while setting all the LSU records for single season and career stroke average. The Stuart, Fla., native punched out five victories, putting her third all-time in single season titles.

LSU's first national champion came from freshman Austin Ernst, who shot a pair of six-under 66s and had a hole-in-one to capture the NCAA Championship in 2011 and she helped the Lady Tigers to the back-to-back third place finishes. She also advanced to the 2011 semifinals of the USGA Women's Amateur, and the 2012 North-South championship.

Baton Rouge senior Tessa Teachman had her best season in 2012, shooting 1-under for 72 holes  to finish third in the championships as she helped push the Lady Tigers back to another third place finish.

Lindsay Gahm and Madelen Sagstrom will also be back in 2012-13 after playing in every event in their first years at LSU. They will join a strong recruiting class that Coaches Bahnsen and Rather have brought in to accept the challenge to get back again to the Championships.

Simply put, the LSU women's golf program remains and continues to grow in national status each and every year, facing the best in tournaments throughout the country in preparation to be ready for post-season play.

Bahnsen takes the LSU program to the 2012-13 season with the same dogged determination she has shown throughout her days as a player and during her years as head coach. The numbers show her success: 21 All-Americans, 44 All-SEC, 39 tournament titles, 37 individual titles, 11 top three finishes in the SEC championships, 18 appearances in the NCAA regionals, 11 appearances in the NCAA Division I Championship and seven top-10 finishes in those 10 events.

She has coached two winners of the prestigious LPGA Diana Shore Award (Lisette Lee in 2000 and Meredith Duncan in 2002) and the 1986 College Player of the Year (Jenny Lidback). But let's talk off the course as well. There have been 84 SEC Academic Honor Roll selections, 27 National Golf Coaches Association Academic Scholars, and for many years, the women's golf team has had one of the highest GPAs for an athletic team at the school.

In 2010 Bahnsen's golf team was recognized as just one of three teams at LSU to earn an NCAA Public Recognition Award for exceptional work in the classroom. The awards are given annually to teams scoring in the top 10 percent in each sport with their Academic Progress Rate (APR).

She knows nothing on the LPGA or the Symetra (formerly the Futures) tour is guaranteed for any golfer. She knows what it is like to have a husband, a family and the need to divide time between the coaching job and the family job. Her values on balancing both are what make her a special person and a coach that players want to play for.

Every year has brought new challenges and every time Bahnsen has answered that call. Every year, the desire to succeed is that much greater and that is what seems to continue to light the fire of the lady who knows LSU golf inside and outside, backwards and forwards.

Bahnsen's teams learn a lot about golf during their LSU days, but they also learn a lot about the ups and downs of sports. She doesn't just go through the motions of being a coach. Bahnsen knows what the girls are going through with each shot they take and she feels their excitement and disappointments. She is there to congratulate, offer a tip when necessary and provide the consoling hands of sympathy when things don't go the right way.

It's that style which has earned her the respect of her peers throughout the league and country.

Bahnsen came to LSU with credentials that were excellent, lettering in golf at McGill-Toolen High School in Mobile, Ala. She led the school to two state titles and in 1979 won the state individual championship and the National High School Tournament. Her mother was an LPGA teaching professional, a four-time Alabama state women's champion, and a Mobile Sports Hall of Fame inductee.

Bahnsen is married to LSU Senior Associate Athletic Director David "Bo" Bahnsen. "They have two children, son, Darren, 23 (an LSU graduate, a former member of state championship basketball and golf teams at University High in Baton Rouge and a graduate assistant for the LSU men's basketball team) and daughter, Devin, 21, a junior at LSU.

The Bahnsen File
Name: Karen Mayson Bahnsen
Date of Birth: Oct. 11, 1960
Husband: David "Bo" Bahnsen, LSU Sr. Associate AD
Children: Darren 23, Devin 21
High School: McGill Toolen, Mobile, Ala.
College: BA, LSU, 1984

1979 -- High School All-American; National High School Champion
1980-83 -- Four-year letter winner at LSU, first golf signee; AIAW Tournament participant, 1980-81; NCAA Tournament participant, 1982
1986 -- SEC Coach of the Year; NGCA South Region Coach of the Year; Team finished ninth at the NCAA Division I Championships
1992 -- Team won Southeastern Conference Championship Tournament
1994 -- Member, La. Team, SE Women's Amateur Championships
1995 -- Member, La. Team, SEC Women's Amateur Championships; SEC Coach of the Year; Winning Co-Coach, East-West All-Star NCAA Match
1996 -- Team finished eighth at the NCAA Division I Championships
1997 -- NGCA South Region Coach of the Year
1998 -- Team finished fifth at the NCAA Division I Championships
1999 -- Team finished 10th at the NCAA Division I Championships
2000 -- Team finished 10th at the NCAA Division I Championships
2001 -- Team finished 12th at the NCAA Division I Championships
2006 -- Team finished 23rd at the NCAA Division I Championships; LSWA Louisiana Women's Golf Coach of the Year
2007 -- LSWA Louisiana Women's Golf Coach of the Year
2008 -- Team finished 15th at the NCAA Division I Championships; LSWA Louisiana Women's Golf Coach of the Year; Inducted into NGCA Hall of Fame
2009 -- Team finished 12th at the NCAA Division I Championships
2011 -- Team finished 3rd at the NCAA Division I Championships; LSWA Louisiana Women's Golf Coach of the Year
2012 - Team finished 3rd at the NCAA Division 1 Championships; LSWA Louisiana Women's Golf Coach of the Year.

Bahnsen's Year-by-Year Coaching Record