Those walking the links at Chestnut Hills Golf Club this month for the 96th Women’s City Golf Tournament will see a threepeat of the same jersey: That of the Purdue Fort Wayne Mastodons.
Fresh off helping PFW to the second-best conference tournament finish in program history at the Horizon League Championship in April, three Mastodons golfers have entered the field to vie for the title in their adopted city.
Lillian Gottman, Hunar Mittal and Auburn native Lillie Cone will compete as they prepare to lead PFW in the fall as the three seniors on the 2026-27 roster.
“I’m so excited,” Gottman said. “I booked the tee time for us three to play our practice round, and I know all three of us are probably going to be wearing our team uniforms just to have the pride. I’m so excited to have PFW on my polo and play in Fort Wayne.”
Cone, a former DeKalb standout, has experience in this tournament, having finished in a tie for 10th in 2024 at Brookwood Golf Club, but Gottman and Mittal are newcomers to the field.
Gottman is an Owensville native who is thrilled to get to spend a week in the Summit City during the summer.
Mittal, who usually goes home to India during the summer, is staying this year to work as an intern at First Tee of Indiana-Fort Wayne. With that organization, she got a glimpse of the 5,979-yard, par-72 Chestnut Hills in late June.
“I would say there’s no tree on the golf course,” Mittal said, laughing. “But it’s an amazing golf course. It seems like the course is in a good condition.”
Mittal was a first-team All-Horizon League pick for the Mastodons in 2025 and this past season finished 15th at the Horizon League Championship, one of four PFW players in the top 20.
Gottman, who will be debuting a new, left-hand-low putting grip in the City tournament, was 12th in the HL Championship in April and has four career top-10s with the Mastodons.
Cone was a two-time Northeast 8 conference champion and three-time sectional medalist in high school.
The three plan to use the tournament as a springboard into what it is hoping will be a record-setting capstone collegiate campaign.
“If it goes well, it’s a big boost of confidence going into the fall,” Gottman said. “And if it doesn’t go well, I know I’ll learn some things to get me ready for the fall. I think it’s going to be a win-win no matter how it ends up.”
Added Mittal: “It’s going to prep me up good for fall. Just in that competitive state of mind; it’s different than just practicing yourself or playing with your friends. Exposing to that environment before the season starts is going to be good.”
For his part, Mastodons coach Jim Earle, entering his fifth season leading the program, believes any of his three players have a chance to hoist the city trophy.
There is recent precedent for a Mastodon emerging as Fort Wayne’s top stick: PFW’s Justin Hicks, a city native, won the men’s tournament last summer, beating Mastodon teammate Julian Dugan by a stroke at Sycamore Hills.
“That was really a big deal for the university, it really brought a lot of positive light to the men’s golf program,” Earle said of Hicks’ victory, which he is hoping one of his charges can replicate.
“(A Mastodon winning) would be just another feather in the cap of a program that’s over the last four years made great strides, has won four NCAA Division I tournaments, that has had their highest finishes in the Horizon League championship and been on the crest of winning that championship. I think it would just send another really bright spotlight and it would be huge for this program.”
But there will be plenty of competition for the trophy. Defending champion Taylor Larkins, a Carroll star headed to Ball State in the fall, was one of the youngest champions in the event’s history last year at age 17 when she shot 1 over to win by three shots at Coyote Creek. In the interim, she has turned in a dominant senior high school season in which she finished fifth at the IHSAA state finals and won a regional championship.
Also back is Cassidy Ayres, a Homestead alumnus who is entering her junior season at IU-Indy. She has been runner-up at each of her last three appearances, in 2022, 2023 and last year. Ayres’ Jaguars teammate, Emma Frauhiger, also a Fort Wayne native, was second in 2024 and seventh last year.
A Mastodon of the past, Ashton Taft, who was the first in the program to earn all-conference honors in Division I when she did so in the Summit League in 2014, is trying to finally break through. The Snider graduate has finished third each of the last two years and also has a pair of runner-up finishes among her 13 previous entries in the field.