Kate, Caroline, and Ryan MacVicar

Photo by Lisa Abitbol

Just because they’re sisters, and they all play golf, and they all play golf at Wellesley, doesn’t mean they agree on everything.

The MacVicar sisters all started playing at the same time as kids, but they don’t remember it quite the same way. “I thought golf was boring, so my dad would spend hours trying to make golf fun by creating games for us,” Kate MacVicar ’23 recalls.

Caroline MacVicar ’23 has a slightly different recollection. “We joined the LPGA Girls Golf program that’s run by former women golfers, and seeing their dedication and love for the sport as a young girl made me fall in love with golf,” she says. “Golf is unique … in that every course you play on has its own unique challenges, so it never gets boring.”

Ryan MacVicar ’20 credits the program with helping them get started with—and get invested in—golf. “That was a great way to help connect us to other girl golfers, because golf is so male-dominated, it can be a little intimidating for a young girl,” she says.

Regardless of their start in the sport, they’ve been committed to it for years. Twins Caroline and Kate played with Ryan as eighth graders on their Northridge High School team in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and got to enjoy two years playing with their sister, the captain. (Their high school team had six players, which means that, yes, the team was half MacVicars.) Ryan is currently the captain for the Blue, a familiar situation. She admits it was a bit of a challenge at first to be both captain and big sister, but she works hard to remain fair to everyone. “I try to treat them like any other player on the team,” she says, and she tries to make sure her teammates “don’t feel like it’s the sisters against everybody else.”

Of course, on an eight-person team, with only five players working toward the team’s score at any given tournament, it can be a MacVicar-heavy experience. The golf team plays a split schedule between fall and spring, and it competed in four tournaments last fall—three of which featured all three sisters. In fact, at the Williams Invitational, the Blue’s final fall tournament, the sisters were the top three finishers for Wellesley. This performance earned Ryan Liberty League Performer of the Week, and Caroline nabbed Liberty League Rookie of the Week.

It will be bittersweet as Ryan gets in her final collegiate swings this spring, but they all agree that they want to have a successful season by each other’s sides. “I hope that we can make it to the NCAAs, especially since this is Ryan’s last year here and our last year together,” Caroline says. But however the season ends, it won’t be the last time the sisters hit the links together, Ryan says, though she anticipates a slightly different experience in the future. “I’ll be looking forward to when some of that pressure is removed and I can just play for enjoyment.”