Sept. 13, 2005

LAS VEGAS - UNLV women's golf team was ranked 14th in the country in Golfweek's 2005-06 preseason poll the magazine announced, and it is the highest ranking ever for the Rebels in the five years of the program.

The Rebels have won the last two Mountain West Conference championships under the guidance of head coach Missy Ringler and open up their season at the Dick McGuire Invitational on Sept. 26-28 in Albuquerque, N.M. UNLV returns three player from last year's championship lineup and five letterwinners overall.

"I am extremely excited about the ranking and to be in the preseason top 15," Ringler said. "We have a very solid team and hopefully we will climb toward the top 10."

The Rebels also had two players honored by Golfweek, as senior Elena Kurokawa was named to the publication's preseason third team and Da Sol Chung was named as one of eight freshmen in the country to watch.

Kurokawa had a strong junior year last season as she was named the 2004-05 Mountain West Conference Player of the Year after earning medalist honors at the Mountain West Conference Championship. She fired a career low 67 (-4) at the Spartan Invitational, which was tied for the second-lowest round by score and par in Rebel history and she finished her year with a 74.56 scoring average, the second-lowest single-season average on record. Kurokawa, a native of Redondo Beach, Calif., was named the league's golfer of the month twice and finished in the top 10 in six tournaments.

Chung, from Seoul, Korea, enters her freshman year at UNLV as one of the top prospects in the country. A 2005 graduate of Dae Won Fil High School in Seoul, Chung was a member of the Korean National Team. She competed at the 2004 Nevada Women's Open, finishing in a tie for fifth. Her three-round score of 215 (-1) was the lowest amateur score in the event.

UCLA was at the top of the poll, followed by Duke, the defending NCAA Champion. Pepperdine, Georgia, and Auburn rounded out the top five. The Rebels were the highest ranked team from the MWC in the poll as New Mexico was ranked 23rd and conference newcomer TCU was 25th.

GOLFWEEK'S WOMEN'S PRESEASON TOP 25
1. UCLA2. Duke3. Pepperdine4. Georgia5. Auburn6. Washington7. Arizona St.8. Southern California9. Florida10. Tennessee11. Arkansas12. California13. Stanford14. UNLV15. LSU16. Tulane17. Virginia18. UC Irvine19. Purdue20. Arizona21. Missouri22. Wake Forest23. New Mexico24. Ohio St.25. TCU