Bobcats ready for NCAA regional

From staff reports

Austin May 08, 2008 10:29 am

— The Texas State women’s golf team plays in the NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Regional Championships for the first time in school history when the Bobcats travel to Austin to compete in the 2008 NCAA Central Regional Championship starting today at the University of Texas Golf Club.
The top eight teams and top two individuals not on the eight qualifying teams will advance to the 2008 NCAA Championship set for May 20-23 in Albuquerque, N.M.
The University of Texas Golf Club is a par 72, 6,301-yard course and UCLA enters the Central Regional as the top-ranked team after the Bruins finished the regular season ranked No. 2 by the Golfworld/Nike Coaches poll. Purdue is seeded as the No. 2 team in the Regional, while Alabama is the third seed and Denver is fourth.
The other Top 10 seeded teams at the Regional include: Kent State, Pepperdine, LSU, Texas A&M, Notre Dame and Texas.
The rest of the field includes TCU, Florida State, North Carolina State, East Tennessee State, Texas Tech, Washington, Nebraska, Harvard, Texas State, Illinois State and Fairleigh Dickinson.
Three players playing as individual competitors at the Central Regional Championships: Steffi Kirchmayr from the College of Charleston, Sara Wikstrom of Arkansas and Araceli Felgueroso of Coastal Carolina.
Texas State earned the berth after winning the 2008 Southland Conference Tournament April 21-23 in Beaumont, and enter the tournament having won two tournaments this season. The Bobcats also have six top-five finishes in 10 tournaments this year.
Texas State began the 2007-08 campaign winning Nebraska’s Chip-N-Club Invitational, recorded a second-place showing at Florida’s Gainesville Shootout and third-place finishes at Kansas State’s Sunflower Invitational and Texas State’s Claude Jacobs Intercollegiate. The Bobcats also tied for fourth at the Arkansas-Little Rock Invitational.
The Bobcats’ lineup includes the top freshman class in the nation according to Golfstat.com. The Bobcats lead the nation with an average score of 77.59 per round among first-year collegiate players. They are Linn Gustafsson, Caitlin Bliss, Sehee Kim and Trine Mortensen.

It hasn’t taken second-year head coach Mike Akers long to take Texas State’s women’s golf program to new heights. This year’s feats resulted in Akers being named the Southland Conference Coach of the Year.
In addition, between Oct. 2006 and Oct. 2007, the Texas State women’s golf team moved up 100 places to become one of the Top 50 programs in the country.
Akers came to Texas State in September 2006, after serving as the assistant coach for both the University of Central Florida men and women’s golf programs. He also spent one season as a volunteer assistant for the women’s program at Middle Tennessee. Akers also was the associate head coach at his Alma mater, Fort Hays State in Kansas for eight seasons. There, he helped develop the best program in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.
Texas State’s Linn Gustafsson was named the Southland Conference Freshman of the Year after winning individual medalist honors at the SLC Tournament and Chip-N-Club tournament at Lincoln, Neb. She won the Southland Conference Tournament after setting a tournament record with a three-day total of 220. She also had seven Top 10 finishes in the nine tournaments in which she competed and has lowest average score in the SLC with a 74.50 average per round.
Tee times for the tournament are scheduled for 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. today. The course is located in west Austin off FM 2222 near the Steiner Ranch subdivision.