Bucknell University Athletics
Bucknell Women's Golf Tees Off 2010-11 Season This Weekend at Annual Home Tournament
9/8/2010 8:00:00 AM | Women's Golf
Sept. 8, 2010
LEWISBURG, Pa. -- Armed with a roster full of experienced, well-credentialed players along with a promising rookie class, Kevin Jamieson's Bucknell women's golf team opens its 2010-11 season this weekend by hosting its annual invitational tournament.
The Bucknell Women's Invitational kicks off Saturday with an 8 a.m. shotgun start at the Bucknell Golf Club. The teams will play 36 holes on Saturday and 18 more on Sunday, beginning at 8:30.
The Bison will have two teams in the tournament. The "Orange" squad will have the team's two most accomplished players -- senior Katie Jurenovich and junior Minjoo Lee -- teamed up with freshmen Lauren Bernard, Kasha Scott and Bridget Wilcox. The "Blue" squad will be comprised of juniors Kelsey Meybin and Brittany Rendell and sophmores Alana Friedlander and Kate Monahan.
Joining Bucknell this weekend will be Cleveland State, Hofstra, Kutztown, Lehigh, Marshall, McDaniel, Navy, Oakland, Radford, Robert Morris, Rutgers, Seton Hall, Siena, St. Francis (N.Y.), Saint Francis (Pa.) and defending champion William & Mary.
This is the 10th home women's golf tournament Bucknell has staged, dating back to the original event in the spring of 2001. The Bison won their own tournament in the fall of 2006, they were runner-up in the spring of 2002 and 2004, and they have never finished outside the top five. Bucknell has had two medalists in the event, Jess Hetrich in 2002 and Teri Schlang in 2006.
Last year, Lee broke the Bucknell 54-hole scoring record (228), finishing sixth individually with rounds of 78-76-74. As a team, the Bison finished fourth, trailing William & Mary, Marshall and Columbia. William & Mary's Caroline Sweet is the defending individual champion.
Below is a more detailed season preview:
After seven years competing as an associate member of the Big South Conference, coach Kevin Jamieson finally feels like his Bucknell women's golf team belongs. The Bison have still yet to crack the top three in the very competitive, Southern-school-dominated league, but all signs indicate that they may be on the verge of a breakthrough.
Bucknell finished a best-ever fourth at the 2008 Big South Championship, and even though the team slipped back to sixth in both 2009 and 2010, a bit of bad luck with injuries was the major factor. Last season, the Bison broke the school record with a 303 team score in the second round of the Big South event, and for the first time ever it boasted an individual leader as junior-to-be Minjoo Lee topped the field after both the first and second round.
The Bison were one of only three teams in the field with two top-10 finishers, as Lee ended up fourth and rising senior Katie Jurenovich tied for ninth. One of Jamieson's goals for his team is to play in the final group on the final day of the competition, and last spring Bucknell missed the final pairing by only five shots.
"We think we can win the Big South," Jamieson boldly stated. "This is an outstanding conference, and we feel that we belong with the best teams, we just have to prove it. After two rounds last year we know we can compete. In 2011 we should be one of the more experienced teams in the championship, and our goal is to be in a position to win it on the final day."
Bucknell's title hopes lie not just on the shoulders of Jurenovich and Lee, who are clearly two of the best players in the Big South, but also on its depth. The biggest difference between the Bison and the teams at the top of the leaderboard has not come from the Nos. 1 and 2 positions but from the 3-4-5 spots. With the return of four other letterwinners along with the addition of three extremely promising recruits, this could be Jamieson's deepest team to date.
"It's hard to find a better 1-2 punch than Katie and Minjoo," lauded Jamieson. "Both of them have really improved their mental outlooks on the game. Minjoo has learned to realize that she does not need to be perfect on every shot. Our program philosophy centers around relying on our short game. We're not asking for perfect, we're going to make mistakes, but if we can get the ball up and in consistently we can live with those mistakes. Minjoo has made great strides with that. Katie is our captain and our hardest-working player, the one everyone else looks up to. She has always had a well-built golf swing, and now her mental game has changed too. She is much more forgiving of herself."
Jurenovich has finished in the top 10 in both of her Big South Championship appearances (she had to withdraw due to illness in 2009), and last year's career-best, 1-over 73 in the second round propelled the Bison to that school-record 303. She averaged a 79.2 in 2009-10, her career low and the second-best mark on the squad behind Lee. Jurenovich is doing a summer internship in Denmark, which will limit some of her practice time, but Jamieson feels that her swing is well-suited to a quick bounce back.
Lee is coming off a sensational sophomore campaign. She shattered the program record with a 77.8 scoring average (76.9 in the fall), earned All-Big South honors with her fourth-place finish and was named the Big South Scholar-Athlete of the Year. Lee's 2-under 70 in the opening round at the Big South was not just the school record, it was the first sub-par round in program history. She also had a couple of sixth-place finishes in the fall, when eight of her nine rounds were in the 70s, and she was a two-time Big South Player of the Week.
Lee played very well in the summer, also, coming within one stroke of qualifying for the U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links Championship.
Two of Lee's classmates, Brittany Rendell and Kelsey Meybin, will also be keys to Bucknell's fortunes. Rendell has steadily improved throughout her career and last season posted an 83.9 average.
"Brittany is the ultimate grinder, and she is one of the best chippers I have seen in a long time," said Jamieson. "She is a very good ball-striker, and if she can improve her putting, she could emerge as a top player."
Meybin averaged an 82.5, although she missed almost all of the spring season with an illness. She returned in time for the Big South Championship and opened with a solid 81 before struggling with her stamina the rest of the way. Maybin does have the ability to go low, as evidenced by an opening-round 75 at the Princeton Invitational last fall.
The Bison have two rising sophomores in Alana Friedlander and Kate Monahan. Friedlander took advantage of Meybin's absence last spring and gained some valuable experience, playing in three tournaments to an average of 88.4.
Both Friedlander and Monahan completely re-worked their swings last year to help adapt to the longer, tougher college courses, and now they are working on trusting their new swings.
"Alana and Kate both added 15 to 20 yards in length," said Jamieson, "and it has thrown off all of their yardages. With a good summer of practice they should be able to narrow down those misses. Alana really benefitted from a lot of playing time in the spring against some very good competition. It really boosted her confidence. She is the longest hitter on the team and thinks she can play with anyone."
Jamieson's face lights up when the topic changes to his three newcomers: Lauren Bernard, Kasha Scott and Bridget Wilcox. All three have impressive junior credentials not just locally, but at the national level.
Scott, a graduate of Cherry Creek High School in Colorado, led her team to four regional championships, the 2007 5A state championship and a pair of state runner-up finishes. In March 2010 she shot a 2-under 70 in a competitive round, and she placed third at the Colorado Open. Scott has competed in tournaments in San Diego, Boise and State College, Pa., where she posted an even-par 72 on the Penn State Blue Course, a track that the Bison play every fall at the Nittany Lion Invitational.
Wilcox is a Bernardsville, N.J., native who attended the Taft School in Connecticut, where she was a four-time all-league performer and New England Championship medalist. She placed third in the New Jersey State Junior Girls Championship, has played in several Future Collegians World Tour events, and she reached quarterfinals of the New Jersey State Women's Amateur last summer. Like Scott, she also played in the PGA Junior Series tournament at Penn State.
Bernard, whose older brother Dan is a member of the Bison men's golf team, recently graduated from the Academy of Notre Dame in Villanova, Pa. She shot 1-over par to win the 2010 Inter-Ac individual title by five shots, while leading her team to its second straight championship and first-ever undefeated season. Bernard was a four-time All-Inter-Ac selection.
"Statistically speaking, this is probably the strongest incoming class we've ever had," said Jamieson. "This class has excellent national tournament exposure with outstanding results. They are all coming in with a tremendous amount of experience, and I expect each of them to be immediate impact players."
This week's event will give Jamieson the opportunity to play his entire roster, get the freshmen's feet wet, and see what kind of tournament shape the rest of the squad is in. In two weeks the team heads to Wisconsin for the first time to play in the Badger Invitational, then it's back to Penn State for the Nittany Lion Invitational. Tournaments at Akron and Rutgers round out the fall season, and Jamieson hopes strong showings, particularly at the two Big Ten events, will propel Bucknell into some bigger events in the spring.
