Ace Hunt
GoSycamores.com
DALLAS -- The Indiana State women's golf team begins its spring campaign and the march to the annual Missouri Valley Conference Championship by participating in a pair of events this week in the Lonestar State.
The Sycamores' six-event spring schedule begins with the Oral Roberts/Stephen F. Austin Spring Break Invitational on Monday and Tuesday at the Trophy Club in Dallas. The field for this event is 18 teams.
On Wednesday, March 16 the Sycamores will participate in a one-day event -- the Lamar Cardinal Classic -- at the The Champions Circle Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas. The Lamar Cardinal Classic is seven team event added to the schedule over the course of the last week.
"We are off to Dallas for our Spring Break trip," sixth-year head coach Greg Towne said. "We are hoping for warm weather and a lot of wind. The conference championship is in the wind tunnel at Harborside CC in Chicago so I thought it would be fitting to attempt to schedule a tournament where we might get some comparable wind. Texas usually obliges. The field for our first event is 18 really strong teams as well as the top ranked teams from our conference. We are the only team that has yet to play a tournament so our main objective is to get the rust off and quickly because its less than a month till we defend at our home event and five weeks to the conference championship."
"We had the good fortune of a late invite to a one day tournament with Lamar, SIU, Bradley and 3 other teams on Wednesday at The Champions Circle CC in Fort Worth," Towne continued.
The Sycamores are traveling with seven players and with a roster full of freshmen the opportunity is now for them to develop into difference makers at the conference championship in April. Alex Jennings, Robyn Blanchard, Sophie Benetti and Thilda Staubo are the freshmen participating. Returnees Shelby Williams, Dawn Turner and Marissa Uradomo are also traveling this week.
"Marissa is the only player with any extensive experience," Towne said. "The five that will count toward the team will be a game time decision based on the effort we had during practice over the past week. We are going to be going hard this Spring with six events between now and April 17. Practices have gone well especially since the golf courses are now open and we are hitting off grass. I have had some nice results by the freshmen in qualifying so the winter training inside seems to be beneficial."
