BATON ROUGE — For the 12th time in the last 14 years, the LSU women’s golf team was extended an invitation to continue its season in post-season play, advancing to the NCAA East Regional Tournament, May 11-13.
The East Tournament will take place at the Bryan Park Golf and Conference Center in Brown Summitt, N. C. LSU played there earlier this season in the Bryan Park Intercollegiate. The East Regional host is Wake Forest.
LSU was seeded ninth in the 21-team East field with the top eight teams after 54 holes advancing to the NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championships to be held at the Scarlet Course at The Ohio State University, May 20-23. This will mark the 25th NCAA women’s golf team championship decided since the first NCAA sanctioned competition, also held at Ohio State, in 1982.
LSU will be trying to make the final championship rounds for the eighth time and for the first time since the 2001 season. LSU missed the final eight advancing last year in the Central Regional by two shots, finishing in 10th place, but senior Brooke Shelton advanced in a playoff as one of the two individual qualifiers and ended up finishing the national championships in a tie for eighth place.
Arizona State will be the top seed in the East Regional, ahead of Southeastern Conference championship winner and the second seeded Auburn Tigers. Tennessee from the SEC is third, followed by host Wake Forest, California, Vanderbilt, Virginia and South Carolina in eighth, just ahead of LSU.
The remainder of the field in seed order is Florida State, Alabama, North Carolina State, Augusta State, Maryland, Furman, North Carolina, Mississippi State, Campbell, College of Charleston, East Carolina and Yale.
“We are very pleased to be going back to the regional championships again this year,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen. “This team is working very hard and we have been shooting the type of scores in the last couple of tournaments that can get us in the top eight. We look forward to some very competitive practices through this week as we get ready to do what we need to do to advance to the national championships.”
The other two regionals, that will also advance eight teams to the national championships will be conducted at College Station, Texas, and Auburn, Wash. Duke is the top seed in College Station with UCLA the top seed in the field at the Washington regional. Florida from the SEC was sent to the A&M regional, while both Georgia and Arkansas will be in the field in Washington.
LSU, which hosted the first East regional conducted in 1993 and against hosted in 2002, will host one of the 2007 women’s regional events at the University Club in Baton Rouge.