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Bison Women's Golf Squad Heads to Alabama for PUPS Big South Championship
April 7, 2006 LEWISBURG, Pa. - Having trained all year for this, its marquis event, the Bucknell women's golf team is set to travel to Bent Brook Golf Course in McCalla, Ala., this weekend for the Palmetto Utility Protection Service (PUPS) Big South Women's Golf Championship. The Bison will play a practice round on Sunday in advance of the three-day, 54-hole tournament, which begins on Monday. Bucknell is seeded fifth in the eight-team tournament behind Birmingham-Southern, defending champion Coastal Carolina, Winthrop and High Point. Charleston Southern, Radford and Holy Cross are seeded below the Bison. The tournament winner receives an automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament. Golfweek magazine's national rankings are used to determine the seedings. Bucknell enters the tournament with a ranking of 168, just 10 spots behind High Point. The Bison are led by sophomore Amy Loughney (Macungie, Pa./Allentown Central Catholic), who turned heads this time last year as a freshman when she tied for fifth and became the first Bucknell golfer to earn All-Big South honors. Loughney broke the school 54-hole scoring record by shooting 77-76-76, as she led Bucknell to a best-ever fifth-place finish. Bucknell's three-round score of 970 was its best at the PUPS Big South Championship by 25 strokes. After struggling in the fall while undergoing some swing changes, Loughney has really turned it on this spring. She has a team-best 78.0 scoring average in three spring events, which include two top-10 finishes. Loughney placed second at The Shamrock to open the spring, shooting 77-77-76 to come within one of her own 54-hole record. Two weeks later she was ninth at the Hoya Invitational, where she set a personal best with a first-round 75. Bucknell had finished sixth in each of their first two Big South championships in 2003 and 2004, before elevating to fifth last year. The Bison compiled a school record 315 in the first round, when Loughney and Kristen Phalen (Duxbury, Mass./Tabor Academy) both shot 77, Kathryn Batchelor (Lawrenceville, N.J./Princeton Day School) shot 80 and Teri Schlang (Albany, N.Y./Stratton Mountain Academy) had 81. That core group is back again in 2006. "I'm very pleased that we've earned the right to be seeded fifth," said head coach Kevin Jamieson. "After our struggles this past fall, it's a real credit to our players and our program that we were able to storm up through the national rankings to get into that fifth spot. One of the big things that excites us about the Big South Championship is the fact that we don't see four of the eight schools during our golf season. As a coach, I take great pride in the fact that those coaches routinely walk up to me and comment on how wonderful it is to see our `non-scholarship' athletes performing at such a high level. It says a lot about our players that they have the drive and passion to get it done week in and week out." Schlang has the team's second-best spring scoring average at 81.9, followed by freshman Deirdre Moran (Bryn Mawr, Pa./Academy of Notre Dame) at 83.0, Batchelor at 83.4 and Emily Chiodo (Strasburg, Pa./Lampeter-Strasburg) at 85.8. This will be Bucknell's first competition in the state of Alabama.
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