April 20, 2004
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STORYLINE: The No. 20 UNLV women's golf team is peaking at the right time of year as it heads to the Mountain West Conference Championship this week in Sunriver, Ore. UNLV looks to become the only other school beside New Mexico to capture the conference title since the league's inception in 1999. The MWC Championship is a 54-hole event with a single 18-hole round slated for each day at the Meadows Course at Sunriver Resort (Par 71, 5,851 Yards) from Thursday, April 22 through Saturday, April 24. The Rebels have played exceptionally well in 2004, defeating a number of teams head-to-head that were ranked both regionally and nationally. They are coming off the strongest performance in school history after winning both the team and individual crowns at the BYU Dixie Classic in St. George, Utah. The Rebels won the tournament by 27 strokes and defeated four MWC schools in the process. UNLV climbed to No. 20 in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index and should secure an at-large bid from the NCAA selection committee if it does not earn the league's automatic berth. The tournament will feature live scoring, available on unlvrebels.com, courtesy of Golfstat.
THE FIELD: The Mountain West Conference hosts: No. 5 New Mexico, No. 20 UNLV, No. 43 San Diego State, No. 56 Brigham Young, No. 64 Colorado State, and No. 146 Wyoming.
ABOUT UNLV: The Rebels return four starters and eight letterwinners from last season's NCAA Regional-qualifying team. UNLV began the 2003-04 campaign in improbable fashion, winning the Northwest Invite in Sunriver, Ore., by 12 strokes over TCU. The Rebels opened the spring portion of the schedule strong as well, finishing fifth at the Wildcat Invitational and defeating four top-25 teams, followed by a runner-up showing at the Spartan Invitational. In their last outing, the Rebels completed the best tournament showing in school history, winning the BYU Dixie Classic by 27 strokes. They broke two school records along the way and boasted the top two individuals in Sunny Oh and Seema Sadekar. Most recently, Oh was honored as both the MWC Golfer of the Month for April and Golf World's Player of the Week in the magazine's April 16 edition.
THE LINEUP: The Rebels will use the same five-player lineup for the MWC Championship as it has for most of the spring: junior Hwanhee Lee, sophomores Elena Kurokawa, Sunny Oh, and Young Pak, and freshman Seema Sadekar.
HEAD COACH Missy Ringler: UNLV women's golf head coach Missy Ringler is in her second year at UNLV. The Bloomington, Ind., native guided the Rebels to their first postseason appearance last season, sent a player to the national championship and produced the school's first All-American in the sport. An All-Big Eight golfer at Iowa State from 1990-95, Ringler spent three years as the head coach at the University of Minnesota before taking over the UNLV program in its second year. She and her husband, Lance, welcomed their son, Landon, on January 11, 2003.
UNLV VS. THE MWC: Head to head, the Rebels own an 11-4 record against Mountain West Conference competition this year. UNLV has had the most success against San Diego State with a 4-0 mark, and struggled most with New Mexico, going winless in two chances. BYU and Colorado State are the only other schools with head-to-head victories over UNLV, but the Rebels have topped the Cougars twice and the Rams three times over the course of the year.
UNLV AT THE MWC CHAMPIONSHIP: As a third-year program, UNLV returns to the only site it has ever known to host the MWC Championship, Sunriver, Ore. In their inaugural season, the Rebels set a season best team score each day of the tournament, yet still finished fifth in the six-team event. Erin Borcherts paced the squad, finishing fourth overall. Last year, UNLV leaped a couple of rungs ahead on the leaderboard, finishing second overall. The Rebels posed a serious challenge to four-time champion New Mexico as the tournament was decided on the final hole. The Lobos won by a single stroke. Then-freshman Sunny Oh was the individual runner-up, losing to UNM's Katrina Leckovic.
OH CANDIDATE FOR CONFERENCE HONORS: Sophomore Sunny Oh should be among those chosen to the All-Mountain West Conference team on Saturday and is a legitimate candidate for Player of the Year honors. The Rebels' ace ranks third in the MWC with a 74.33 stroke average. She has twice earned the league's Golfer of the Month award, in February and again in April. Also among her accomplishments this season were a victory at the BYU Dixie Classic and a qualifying berth to play in the Takefuji Classic in Las Vegas. Oh, a native of Seoul, Korea, is ranked 21st in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index.
QUOTING COACH RINGLER: "We feel very confident as a team right now, going into this championship. We have done all of the things we wanted and needed to do this spring to be in this position. We have worked very hard and we know we can compete for this title."
