April 27, 2009–The UNLV women's golf team is headed to the NCAA West Regional, which will be held May 7-9 at the ASU Karsten Golf Course in Tempe, Ariz. This will be the seventh-straight NCAA Regional appearance for the Rebels in the eight-year history of the program, all of which have come with Missy Ringler as their head coach. “We are very excited to be staying in the west,” Ringler said. “We have several players who have been able to see and play the course, and we feel very confident about our chances to advance to the national championships.”
UNLV will be the 11th seed in the tournament. UNLV's highest finish in a NCAA Regional tournament came in 2004, when the Rebels finished second in the East Regional to Duke. The last time that UNLV competed in a tournament at Arizona State was the 2007 PING/ASU Invitational, and just one member of the current Rebel lineup, Natasha Krishna (pictured), was on that squad that played the par-72 course. Krishna, then a freshman, posted a three-round score of 222 (72-75-75, +6) and tied for 25th overall, helping the Rebels to an 11th-place finish.
Krishna, a member of the 2009 All-Mountain West Conference team, will be joined in this year’s regional lineup by Therese Koelbaek, Alejandra Guacaneme, Kristen Schelling and Bethany Glassford. That group paced the Rebels to a third-place showing at the 2009 MWC championship, with Koelbaek finishing third overall. Koelbaek earned all-league honors for a second consecutive season after she was second in the conference with a 73.04 scoring average, which included six top-10 performances by the sophomore.
While Krishna is the only Rebel who has played the course as a collegian, rookies Schelling and Glassford have played the Karsten Course during their junior careers. UNLV is one of two teams from the Mountain West Conference in the West Regional, joining TCU in the 21-team field. The field also features seven teams in Golfweek's latest top 25, including No. 1 Arizona State, No. 2 USC, No. 10 LSU, No. 13 Pepperdine, No. 16 Arkansas, No. 17 San Jose Sate and No. 20 Arizona. The top eight teams and top two individuals not on qualifying teams from each regional advance to the NCAA Championships, scheduled for May 19-22 at the Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills, Maryland.
The West regional will be played May 7-9 at the ASU Karsten Golf Course, in Tempe, Ariz., hosted by Arizona State University. Conference automatic qualifiers are indicated in parenthesis next to the institution.
Teams:
1. Arizona State (Pacific-10 Conference)
2. Southern California
3. Louisiana State
4. Pepperdine
5. Arkansas
6. San Jose State (Western Athletic Conference)
7. Arizona
8. California
9. UC Irvine
10. San Francisco
11. UNLV
12. TCU
13. Texas A&M
14. Oregon
15. Long Beach State (Big West Conference)
16. Colorado
17. Texas
18. Baylor
19. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (Southland Conference)
20. Northern Arizona (Big Sky Conference)
21. Oral Roberts (The Summit League)
Individuals:
1. Miki Ueoka, Santa Clara
2. Chelsea Stelzmiller, UC Davis
3. Alice Kim, UC Davis
Report: Bryan Haines, UNLV Sports Information.