CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The Fighting Illini Women's Golf team will begin its fall season by competing in the Mercedes-Benz Collegiate Championship, held in Knoxville, Tennessee, Sept. 18-19. It will be the third consecutive trip to the tournament for the Orange and Blue.
"The team is very excited and very much looking forward to the season," head coach Renee Slone said. "I think they're ready to get things started. We played our qualifying rounds and now we're just excited to get into competition."
The tournament, which is in its 21st year, will be held at Cherokee Country Club (Par 71, 5897 yards).
The group of Illini golfers traveling to the event will be seniors Dana Gattone and Chayanid Prapassarangkul, junior Bing Singhsumalee, sophomore Tristyn Nowlin and freshman Ali Morallos. Senior Grace Park will also be competing individually. Prapassarangkul, Singhsumalee and Nowlin all participated in the tournament a year ago.
The tournament field is comprised of 15 schools, including six teams that finished last season in Golfstat's top 50 rankings. The participating teams are #32 BYU, Coastal Carolina, Eastern Kentucky, Eastern Tennessee State, Iowa, #14 Kent State, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, #26 NC State, #45 SMU, #30 Tennessee, UTSA and #29 Wake Forest.
A year ago, the Illini were paced by Bing Singhsumalee, who finished with a 214 (+1) to help the team finish tied for second at the event. Singhsumalee also tied for eighth individually.
This year, of the 14 teams Illinois will face, seven of them will look familiar to last year's competition: BYU, Kent State, SMU, UTSA, Wake Forest and host Tennessee.
The first round will begin at 7:30 a.m. CT on Monday with a shotgun start. The second and final round of play with be played on Tuesday, with a shotgun start at 8 a.m. CT. The awards presentation will immediately follow the completion of the final round.
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