Montana heads to Arizona seeking top-half finish

The Montana women's golf team will travel to Arizona this weekend and compete next week at the Big Sky Conference Championship in Litchfield Park.

The three-day tournament, which opens on Monday and runs through Wednesday, will be contested at Wigwam Golf Club, a course the Grizzlies played in February at the Bowling Green Intercollegiate.

"There are going to be no surprises," said first-year coach Jimmy Mee. "We'll know what to expect when we get to the golf course on Sunday for our practice round.

"We can just go straight to working around the greens. We already know which clubs to hit off the tees, so we can get a lot of short-game work in and get ready for the next three days."

Montana will go with what has become its usual spring lineup: fifth-year senior Tricia Joyce, sophomores Hannah and Raina Ports, redshirt freshman Kendall Hayward and freshman Elle Higgins.

Joyce will be playing in her third Big Sky Championship. She led the Grizzlies last year, tying for 16th after shooting rounds of 71, 75 and 76 at Talking Stick Golf Club in Scottsdale.

Raina Ports, then a freshman, finished second on Montana last year, tying for 28th overall with rounds of 75, 75 and 76 as the Grizzlies (301-304-313) finished ninth out of 10 teams.

Hannah Ports, Hayward and Higgins will be making their Championship debut.

Montana hasn't had a top-five team finish at the Big Sky Championship since 2014-15 and sits seventh among league teams in the latest national rankings.

Sacramento State, which won last year's Big Sky title by 16 strokes, has a No. 80 national ranking, 50 spots higher than any other league team.

The Hornets, who have finished first or second at every championship since 2014, are the favorites to win their sixth Big Sky title next week.

Northern Arizona (130), Weber State (149) and Idaho (155) make up the next tier of programs in the national rankings.

Montana State (171), Northern Colorado (190), Montana (215), Eastern Washington (224), Portland State (227) and Idaho State (248) will fight to finish in the top half of the 10-team standings.

"Sac State's ranking speaks for itself. They are a top-80 program, which is pretty impressive," said Mee. "If those next three teams don't play their best and we play well, we have a very good chance of sneaking in front of one of them.

"If we play well, we should be fighting for fifth, maybe fourth place. It would be cool to see us finishing in the top half of the conference."

The Grizzlies just completed an eight-day trip to Arizona, a stay bookended by the Wyoming Cowgirl Classic in Maricopa and the Bobcat Desert Classic in Goodyear.

At the Desert Classic, Montana showed off its talent and depth, opening with a 288 on Monday that matched the single-round program record.

The Grizzlies didn't have a countable score higher than 77 on Tuesday or 76 on Wednesday as they posted rounds of 300 and 298.

Montana was alone in fifth place after Monday's round, ahead of the other six Big Sky teams competing, including Idaho and Weber State. The Grizzlies eventually drifted down to 12th in the 17-team field.

"It was nice to see that they are starting to believe a little bit that we can compete," said Mee. "They were looking at the leaderboard going, okay, this is different than we're used to.

"We used to have to play really well to finish 15th. Now we're in 12th and feeling like we didn't play nearly as well as we could have."

Hayward, Raina Ports and Joyce posted scores of 70, 71 and 72 on Monday. Hannah Ports closed 73-74 on Tuesday and Wednesday.

She was 5-under through 11 holes on Wednesday before carding a 9 on the par-4 5th that kept her from challenging the program record for a single round of 68.

"Hannah was obviously a little frustrated afterwards," said Mee. "I told her, process this, get through it. As soon as we were on the plane, she was in good spirits. She was, I can do this. I want to get back after it and try it again."

With one tournament remaining, Raina Ports has a season scoring average of 75.61, which would be the second-best in program history behind Barbora Bakova's 75.52 from 2014-15.

Hailey Hoagland, at 75.83 in 2017-18, is the only other golfer in program history to play a season at better than a 76 average.

For the season, Higgins is at 76.57, Hayward at 77.96, Joyce at 78.39, Hannah Ports at 78.61.

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

Kendall Hayward

Elle Higgins

Tricia Joyce

Hannah Ports

Raina Ports

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