McNeese Women's Golf opens play at SLC Championship Monday

Staff Reports

The Contraband

The McNeese Women’s Golf team will open play at the 15th annual Southland Conference Women’s Golf Championship Monday at the 6, 251-yard, par 72 Hills Course at Stonebridge Country Club in McKinney, Texas.

This year will mark the fourth consecutive year the Southland women’s golf championship will be held at a neutral site. Lamar has won the most Southland tournament titles with six, including the last three tournaments, followed by Sam Houston State with two and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi with one.

The tournament is slated to tee off at 8 a.m. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Pairings are based on team seeding, which is calculated using the Golfstat rankings. Players will play 18 holes of golf on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Cowgirl team will be comprised of senior Dolores Brown, junior Kaitlin Fox, sophomores Kennedy Bodfield, Ashlynn Novak, and Hannah Valentine.

Fox enters the tournament with the best scoring average on the team with a 78.67 average. Novak is second with a 78.83 average. Brown, who is one of three seniors on the team, is third with a 79.33 average. Bodfield has an 80.08 average and Valentine has an 84. 67 average.

Houston Baptist enters the tournament with the highest Golfstat ranking. Last season, the Huskies finished third in the field of eight. Central Arkansas is ranked second and three-time defending champion Lamar is ranked third according to the Golfstat rankings heading into the tournament.

Incarnate Word, which is not eligible to earn the Southland’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament during its transition period from Division II to Division I, will be participating in this year’s tournament unattached. If the Cardinals were to win the event, the team finishing in second place will move on to represent the Southland in an NCAA regional.

Live scoring for the 2016 Southland Conference Women's Golf Championship will be available at www.southland.org/WGolf.