March 31, 2018
SAN DIEGO ââ'¬" Playing in its final tournament before the Mountain West Championships, the San Diego State women's golf team will travel to the Lone Star State early next week for the Bruzzy Challenge, April 2-3, in Carrollton, Texas.
The first two rounds of the inaugural event are scheduled to get underway on Monday at Maridoe Golf Club, while the final 18 holes are slated for a Tuesday completion on the par-72, 6,335-yard course layout.
Both days will feature an 8:30 a.m. CT/6:30 a.m. PT shotgun start, with a live scoring link courtesy of Golfstat available on GoAztecs.com.
Along with No. 49 SDSU, the competitive 16-team field features nine additional schools ranked among the Golfstat top 75, including Houston (26) Iowa State (34), Texas A&M (38), Texas Tech (50), SMU (53), Missouri (59), TCU (60), Kansas State (67) and UTSA (72), while host North Texas, Boston College, Brigham Young, Iowa, Texas State and UT Arlington round out the list of participating squads.
Seventh-year Aztec head coach Leslie Spalding has shuffled her lineup for the team's upcoming venture, penciling in the starting lineup of freshmen Sara Kjellker, Gioia Carpinelli and Cameron Lee, along with senior Mila Chaves and sophomore Fernanda Escauriza.
For the season, Kjellker leads the Aztecs with a 74.74 scoring average, while Carpinelli (75.60) ranks second, followed by closely by Escauriza (75.67). Carpinelli is the lone SDSU player in this week's contingent to have appeared in all eight events for the squad this year, while Lee will be making her first varsity start in an Aztec uniform after competing as an individual in the UC Irvine Invitational last fall.
The Scarlet and Black is coming off a sixth-place finish in the match-play phase of the SDSU March Mayhem, its lone home tournament of the year at The Farms Golf Club in Rancho Santa Fe. The Aztecs landed a spot in the championship bracket after placing seventh in stroke play with a combined 14-over-par 302, with Kjellker tying for third with a 1-under 71.
SDSU dropped its first-round match to Texas, 3.5-1.5, before rebounding with a 3-2 triumph over Colorado in the consolation bracket. However, the Aztecs lost a tiebreaker to UCLA in the fifth-place match when the Bruins posted a greater margin of victory (9-8), as the two sides finished with 2.5 points apiece. Two of this week's starters, Chaves and Carpinelli, posted 2-1 records in match play at the event.
Next week's tournament marks SDSU's second trip to the Lone Star State after tying for ninth at the Betsy Rawls Longhorn Invitational last October in Austin, Texas, where Kjellker tied for sixth on the individual leaderboard at 2-over 218.
Designed by Steve Smyers and Patrick Andrews, Maridoe Golf Club includes a 28-acre lake on the site's property that features deep rough, water, and consistently narrow and sloping fairways on 14 holes.
UP NEXT
Following the Bruzzy Challenge, the Aztecs will have nearly two weeks to prepare for the Mountain West Championships, scheduled for April 16-18 at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif.