SAN DIEGO – The San Diego State women's golf team wraps up its regularly scheduled fall tournament slate this weekend when it heads north for the Stanford Intercollegiate hosted by Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Oct. 11-13, in Stanford, California.
The three-day, 54-hole event gets underway Friday at the par-71, 6,171-yard Stanford Golf Course, where the Aztecs will encounter another challenging field, including the host Cardinal, which enters the tournament ranked No. 1 in the latest Golfweek ratings.
SDSU, ranked 33rd by Golfweek, will also battle 10 other top-40 squads, including USC (3), Arizona State (5), Florida (7), Arizona (10), Oregon (14), Oregon State (15), Pepperdine (27), UCLA (32), Iowa State (35) and Georgia (39), while California, Northwestern, San José State, UC Davis and Washington State round out the list of participating squads.
The Aztecs will tee off with Pepperdine and Oregon for Friday's first round, starting at noon PT on hole No. 10. A live scoring link courtesy of Golfstat will be available on GoAztecs.com.
For their Bay Area excursion, SDSU head coach Leslie Spalding has penciled in the starting lineup of Gioia Carpinelli (Boppelsen, Switzerland), Fernanda Escauriza (Asunción, Paraguay), Bernice Olivarez Ilas (Ayala Alabang, Philippines), April Ranches (San Diego, Calif.) and Ella Adams (Adelaide, Australia).
SDSU's No. 1 player, junior Sara Kjellker (Hollviken, Sweden), who was named Mountain West Women's Golfer of the Month for September, was a late scratch after experiencing a minor injury.
Carpinelli ranks second on the squad with a 72.56 scoring average to go with a pair of top-10 placements. The Aztec junior tied for eighth at the season-opening Branch Law Firm/Dick McGuire Invitational in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after firing a 3-under 213, highlighted by a career-low 66 in round. She also tied for seventh at the Molly Murphy Crowley Collegiate in Portland, Oregon, carding a 5-over 221 in a field where only three competitors broke par for the week.
As a freshman, Olivarez Ilas has cracked the SDSU starting five in all three events this year, ranking third on the team with a 74.56 stroke average. She logged her highest finish last month at the at the Golfweek Conference Challenge outside of Vail, Colorado, tying for 24th at 3-over 219. Olivarez Ilas also registered a season-best 3-under 69 in the final round of the Branch/McGuire Invite.
In addition, Escauriza will be the only other Aztec player to start all four events this fall. The SDSU senior occupies the fourth spot on the squad with a 75.22 scoring average and tied for 23rd at the Branch/McGuire Invite with a 3-over 219 for her highest placement of the season thus far.
Meanwhile, Ranches (75.33) and Adams (75.67) will be making their second starts of the fall and third appearances overall.
Now in its 24th year, the Stanford Intercollegiate is hosted by Dr. Condoleezza Rice, an avid golfer who served as U.S. Secretary of State from 2005-09. Dr. Rice is now the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
San Diego State landed in the eighth position out of 17 teams in the 2018 installment of the Stanford Intercollegiate, where it shot a collective 19-over 871 to finish eight strokes out of the top five. Carpinelli is the Aztecs' top returner from last year's tournament after tying for 20th with a 2-over 215, while Escauriza (+3) was one shot behind in a tie for 25th.
USC (-15) took home the team title after topping the host Cardinal (E), while Northwestern (+1) finished third, followed by Washington (+7) and Arizona (+8) and Florida State (+8).
UCLA's Mariel Galdiano and Pepperdine's Hira Naveed shared medalist honors last year, but with Galdiano skipping this season's event and Naveed completing her eligibility, USC's Alyaa Abdulghany is the top returning individual after finishing fourth with a 5-under 2018, while fellow teammates Amelia Garvey (T-8th, -3) and Malia Nam (10th, -1) are also back in the mix, along with Northwestern's Brooke Riley (T-11th, E) and the Arizona State duo of Raquel Olmos (T-13th, +1) and Olivia Mehaffey (T-13th, +1).
The Aztecs also visited "The Farm" in October 2016, when they tied for 12th with Pepperdine at 35-over 603 after the final round was washed out due to standing water on several greens from heavy rains earlier in that weekend. Georgia Lacey, who has since completed her eligibility, was SDSU's top individual in that tournament, tying for second with a 2-under 140 en route to earning Mountain West Women's Golfer of the Month honors. Prior to that trip, the Aztecs made the trek to Stanford Golf Course for the NCAA Regional Championships in May 2016, finishing 12th out of 18 schools with a 43-over 895.
Designed in 1930 by renowned architects William Bell and George C. Thomas, Stanford Golf Course is consistently rated as one of the finest in the nation. In 2009, the course was selected as the third-best collegiate track in the United States following a Golf Channel survey of 160 coaches and was ranked fifth-best in the country according to Golfweek in 2010. Throughout the years, Stanford Golf Course has played host to numerous amateur and professional events, including U.S. Open qualifying, U.S. Junior Amateur qualifying, NCAA Women's Championships, NCAA Regionals, as well as a former Senior PGA Tour event, The Gathering at The Farm.
After this weekend's tournament, SDSU head coach Leslie Spalding will compete in the 2019 LPGA Senior Championship, Oct. 14-16, on The Pete Dye Course at French Lick Resort in French Lick, Indiana.