PALM DESERT, Calif. – Wyoming Cowgirls golf begins the spring schedule with the Mountain Classic Matchplay this Monday through Wednesday at The Classic Club.
UW is co-hosting the eight-team event with Mountain West rival Boise State. Matches begin at 11 a.m. each day.
The Cowgirls will be paired with Northern Arizona during the first round. Head coach
Josey Stender set the UW lineup after Sunday's practice round.
The matchups are:
Kyla Wilde vs. Lizzie Neale,
Meghan Vogt vs. Sumin Kang,
Kira Reisner vs. Amy Hodgkins,
Sophie Spiva vs. Ava Bates,
Emerson Purcell vs. Ellena Slater,
Grace Dunkleberger vs. Nina Lukyanenko and Samathan Spielman vs. Joe Baranczyk. Freshmen
Lucia Morelli and
Erika Cook will be paired with Boise State's Emily Cadewll and Zoe Parker.
"The work we put in during break we need to see it in two areas,"
Stender said on the One Wyoming Podcast. "Every girl needs to hit one more green in regulation and make one more putt. That has been our bread and butter and what their practice plans and intentions should have been over break."
Each golfer will have a head-to-head match against an opposing team's golfer each round. Lineups will be selected by head coaches before each match.
Matches will play out through 18 holes, if needed, with no time limit. No extra holes will be played and half points will be awarded if the matches end in a tie. If the team matches end in a tie, the tiebreaker will be determined by the largest margin of victory for all matches combined.
The other Monday parings are Boise State vs. Portland State, Seattle vs. Montana State and North Dakota State vs. St. Thomas.
"I think in college golf, if you're asking me as a coach, we'd love to have matchplay more often," Stender said. "It has a different feel to it, you can take different risks than you would in stroke play. The other part of this event is you are paired with a teammate, and I would say that is definitely a leg up for us. I think our culture and our team chemistry will be huge for us to rely on."
UW is led by seniors Wilde and Vogt. Morelli, Cook, Reisner and Spielman are among the young players Stender believes are poised for a strong finish to the 2024-25 season.
"They definitely didn't leave a golf course with anything left in them. They fought from beginning to end," Stender said of the challenging fall schedule. "I learned a lot about our young group."
