Fall season continues next week

The fall season for the Montana women's golf team continues next week when the Grizzlies compete at the Loyola Invitational in Flossmoor, Ill., south of Chicago.

The two-day tournament will be held on Monday and Tuesday at the Flossmoor Country Club, with 36 holes the first day, 18 on closing day. Play begins each day at 8 a.m. (MT).

Montana is coming off a fifth-place showing out of eight teams earlier this week at the Battle at Old Works in Anaconda. The Grizzlies were just eight strokes out of second place.

Baylee Barckley won the tournament by a stroke after carding rounds of 70, 72 and 72. Her three-round total of 214 was the second-best score in program history, and she became the first Grizzly to win a tournament since Barbora Bakova in March 2015.

Montana shot rounds of 300, 299 and 296 for its best tournament total since September 2013.

The Grizzlies' top five finishers from the Battle at Old Works -- Barckley, Hailey Hoagland, Kari Opatz, Faith D'Ortenzio and Teigan Avery -- will be making the trip to Chicago.

In Tuesday's round of 296, Barckley and Opatz both shot even-par 72. Hoagland came in at 75 and Avery at 77.

"We need our top three not to have a hiccup, then we need someone to step up and give us one more good score," said interim coach Kris Nord. "You've got to at least be in the high 70s on that last score, and we did that pretty well last weekend.

"I have full faith in both Teigan and Faith. Even Caylyn (Villatora) has moments of really good golf. She just has to get more consistent."

The team's only other player, Abby Pfeifer, is out with an injury.

Joining Montana and Loyola at the tournament will be Bucknell, Butler, Chicago State, Creighton, Illinois-Chicago, IUPUI, Nebraska-Omaha, Valparaiso and Wisconsin-Green Bay.

In addition to Barckley finishing first at Old Works, Hoagland came in 12th. After opening with a 78 in Monday's opening round, she carded a 3-under 69 in the second round, just the ninth sub-70 score in program history.

Hoagland was 1-under through 15 holes for her final round on Tuesday before a triple-bogey six on the par-3 4th put her at 2-over. She followed with a bogey before closing with a par.

"Hailey could have been in the mix with Baylee," said Nord. "She was hitting the ball so well with her irons she was 10-15 yards off her yardages. She sailed that par 3 with an iron. I didn't think she had enough club, and she sailed it back into the rocks, and it cost her three strokes.

"Every time she had a bad hole it was because she struck the ball too well. She got a little amped up in competition and it hurt her a little bit, but it wasn't because of bad ball-striking."

Playing in her second consecutive tournament will be D'Ortenzio, from Phoenix. She opened her collegiate career shooting rounds of 75, 81 and 78 at Old Works, with just two double bogeys and nothing worse over 54 holes.

"Every course she's playing, even in our qualifying rounds in Missoula, it's a new course for her," said Nord. "She's just had a really positive attitude, even when she's not been playing well, which is remarkable for a freshman.

"Competitively she is pretty stable. She hits a long ball for her size. The big challenge for her is getting used to 36-hole days. That's a different beast, both physically and mentally. She's a gamer for a freshman."

After returning from Illinois, Montana will have less than two weeks to prepare for the Cowgirl Desert Intercollegiate in Palm Desert, Calif. Two weeks after that, the Pat Lesser Harbottle Invitational in Tacoma, Wash., will wrap up the fall season.

"It's a compressed schedule," said Nord. "You have to take your practice days and really focus on what needs work, because you don't have the time to work on everything.

"We'll work on putting this week because we struggled with that at Old Works. We had a lot of three-putts. Our short game, putting, chipping and pitching is where we need to keep our focus."

The Loyola Invitational will not have live scoring.

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Players Mentioned

Teigan Avery

Baylee Barckley

Faith D'Ortenzio

Hailey Hoagland

Kari Opatz

Abby Pfeifer

University of Montana Athletics