Kent State University
UCF Challenge
No. 10 Women's Golf Begins Spring at UCF Challenge
2/3/2017 3:00:00 PM | Women's Golf
KENT, Ohio – The No. 10 Kent State women's golf team is set to begin the spring season at the UCF Challenge at the Eagle Creek Golf Club Feb. 5-7.
The tournament is set to tee off with a shotgun start at 9 a.m. Sunday, and continue with shotgun starts at 9 a.m. Monday and Tuesday. The Golden Flashes will begin on holes 1-3 Sunday alongside hosts No. 20 UCF and East Carolina.
With UCF and ECU, the Flashes will be competing against Kentucky, No. 14 Miami, South Florida, Wisconsin, Daytona State, Mississippi State, Tulane, Clemson, Iowa State, SMU, No. 17 Texas, North Carolina-Wilmington, Auburn and Old Dominion.
The field is stacked with four top-20 nationally ranked teams and a slew of "Power 5" conference opponents. However, it will be the Flashes who carry the largest targets on their back as the highest ranked team in the field. The top-10 ranking isn't a gift, but a distinction the Flashes earned with consistent success during the fall campaign.
The 2016 fall season began with three freshmen in the lineup, along with a sophomore and a senior leader. Despite the team's youth, Kent State immediately put the collegiate golf world on notice. The upstarts finished in the top-5 of every tournament, including a victory at Texas' Betsy Rawls Longhorn Invitational.
Individually, Kent State rewrote the program's record books. The Flashes posted 13 different rounds of 68 or lower over four tournaments, a feat that had only been accomplished 32 times prior in the program's history. Freshman sensation Pimnipa Panthong started her collegiate career with a three-round score of 205 at the Mercedes-Benz Intercollegiate, a new program record. Two tournaments later, she reset the record to 203 at the Jim West Challenge, highlighted by a third-round score of 63, breaking the single round program record by two strokes.
With her stellar fall, Panthong enters the spring as the 15th ranked women's golfer in the nation. Sophomore Michaela Finn ranks 29th nationally, after an incredible campaign in her own right. Finn finished at 209 in two of her four fall tournaments, joining Panthong as the only golfers in program history to score 209 or better in multiple tournaments in the same season. The Flash's third nationally ranked golfer, No. 106 Wad Phaewchimplee, is a three-time All-MAC First Team honoree and will look to cap off one of the best careers ever at Kent State.
In the fall, the lineup was completed by freshmen Karoline Stormo and Marissa Kirkwood, who each helped propel Kent State into the national top-10. Head coach Greg Robertson can also go to multiple options on his roster, including returners Ellen Breighner, Kasey Nielsen and Kelly Nielsen. Rounding out the roster is freshman Julia Goodson, who finished the fall strong with a top-30 showing at the Silver Lake Shootout.
This season, the Flashes will compete in six regular season tournaments, before aiming for their 19th straight Mid-American Conference Championship at Silver Lake April 21-23. NCAA Regionals is scheduled to begin May 8.
For live updates, click on the live scoring link above or follow @KentStWGolf on Twitter. Â
Players Mentioned
