Griz return to the links Monday in California

The Montana women's golf team will play its second tournament of the spring Monday and Tuesday when the Grizzlies compete at the Sacramento State Invitational. The 54-hole tournament -- 36 on Monday, 18 on Tuesday -- will be played at the Sierra View Country Club in Roseville, Calif.

Montana opened its five-tournament spring schedule last week at the Fresno State Classic. The Grizzlies shot rounds of 314 and 315 to finish 12th in the 15-team field.

"We hit 80 percent of our fairways in Fresno, which is very high, but we only hit 54 percent of the greens. That's where we lost some strokes. If you're only hitting half the greens as a team, you're not going to have the scores you need to be competitive," said first-year coach Matt Higgins.

"We've practiced a lot with our short irons into the green this last week and a half, and on our short game, getting up and down. If we're missing the green, we need to get up and down more."

Junior Alexa Schendelman shot rounds of 76 and 74 at Fresno to tie for 25th, but her teammates had more rounds in the 80s (five) than in the 70s (three). Still, the team's rounds had it right in line with its 315 scoring average from five fall tournaments.

"That was our first tournament of the year, and we had to get off some of the rust," said Higgins. "We shot our average we had through the fall. To shoot your average for the first tournament, that's fine."

Joining Schendelman in the lineup next week will be senior Hayley Bingham, junior Amanda Kahn, sophomore Hailey Hoagland and freshman Baylee Barckley. Schendelman, Bingham, Hoagland and Barckley all played at Fresno. Kahn replaces freshman Sadie Crippen in the lineup for tournament No. 2.

Schendelman, Bingham, Hoagland and Kahn competed at the Sacramento State Invitational last spring, a tournament won by former Grizzly Barbora Bakova. Montana finished third in the five-team field in the first year of the event.

This year's tournament has drawn a field of 15 teams, more than half of which are from the Big Sky Conference: Montana and Sacramento State, plus Eastern Washington, Idaho State, Montana State, North Dakota, Northern Colorado and Weber State.

The host Hornets won last year's tournament with rounds of 299, 300 and 302. Sac State would go on to finish second at the Big Sky tournament, coming in two strokes behind champion Northern Arizona.

"This is the first time we'll see a lot of these Big Sky schools this year," said Higgins. "It will be a chance to see where we stand compared to where we want to be four weeks from now."

After a week off from tournaments, Montana will play the first three weeks of April, concluding with the Big Sky championship April 18-20 at Boulder City, Nev.

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Players Mentioned

Barbora Bakova

Baylee Barckley

Hayley Bingham

Sadie Crippen

Hailey Hoagland

Amanda Kahn

Alexa Schendelman

University of Montana Athletics