Griz open spring season at Jim West Challenge
2/16/2014 12:00:00 AM | Golf
Feb. 16, 2014
The Montana women's golf team will open its spring championship season this week at the Texas State Jim West Challenge, which will be held at the Bandit Golf Course in New Braunfels, Texas.
The 15-team tournament will feature 36 holes on Monday and 18 on Tuesday. The weather forecast for those two days is 82 degrees on Monday and 75 on Tuesday, with little chance of precipitation either day.
Montana's lineup will include senior Lindsay Reeve, junior Tara Green, sophomore Phoebe Tan, redshirt freshman Alexa Schendelman and freshman Amanda Kahn.
Green had the Grizzlies' best scoring average in four fall tournaments of 76.4. Green's career average at Montana is 77.0.
Schendelman (78.7), Kahn (79.8) and Reeve (79.9) all had fall averages below 80, while Tan averaged an 80.7.
Montana will be competing for the first time since mid-October, at the Wyoming Cowgirl Desert Intercollegiate at Palm Desert, Calif.
"What we've been working on inside over the winter break is mostly the process of what we're doing," said first-year coach Joni Stephens. "One of the things we seem to struggle with is getting ahead of ourselves and not being able to move on from what has already happened.
"I want us concentrating on our routines and not getting into outcomes. That means taking care of the business at hand, one shot at a time. That's what we're going to focus on at this tournament, to see if we're able to carry the work we've been doing over the winter out to the course.
"I like the preparation that we've done. The girls couldn't have given me any more than they did. The work they've done has been spot-on. We're as ready as we can be at this point in time without having been on grass."
Teams from Boston College to Cal State Fullerton are entered in the tournament, and all but two of them have a loftier Golfstat ranking than Montana's 155. But only Texas State, at No. 57, Gonzaga, at No. 60, and Fullerton, at No. 78, are in the top 100.
The Bandit will play to a par 71 and 6,178 yards.
"The main thing this tournament will be making the transition onto grass and getting used to chipping and putting again on real grass," Stephens added. "But with the work we're done, I think the transition will be fairly smooth and fairly quick."
This week's tournament will be the first of six for the Grizzlies during their spring season. The schedule concludes, barring a trip in May to NCAA regionals, at the Big Sky Conference championship, which will be held April 20-22 at Chandler, Ariz.
After the Jim West Challenge, Montana will travel to the Western Michigan Invitational at Rio Verde, Ariz., in early March and the BYU Entrada Classic at St. George, Utah, in mid-March.
Montana will take five players to its first three tournaments. The entire team will travel to tournaments at Stockbridge, Ga., and Maricopa, Ariz., over UM's spring break.
"I feel like we have a very competitive schedule," Stephens said. "We're playing at some different type of venues, so I feel like it's going to be good preparation.
"I'll be changing up the five at these first three tournaments, then the last two before conference, every girl will be playing. That will really give me a good opportunity to see who's ready to take us to a win at conference."
Montana ranks third in the Big Sky Conference on Golfstat's latest rankings at No. 155. Portland State, runner-up to Northern Arizona at last spring's Big Sky championship, ranks No. 83, Sacramento State ranks No. 128. The next four teams, including NAU, all have rankings between No. 155 and No. 170.
