MANHATTAN, Kan. – The Kansas State women’s golf team will begin its 2023-24 season – the first under new head coach Stew Burke – with the Schooner Fall Classic, Saturday through Monday, at the par-70, 6,182-yard Belmar Golf Club in Norman, Oklahoma.
The 15-team field will play one round per day beginning with first-round action on Saturday morning at 9 a.m.
“We are excited to finally start our fall season,” Burke said. “The ladies are prepared well and are ready to compete. Our lineup feature is a good blend of youth and experience with two freshmen making their debut. This is an NCAA Tournament level competition with defending NCAA Champions Wake Forest in the field. Our players are more than capable of competing at this level, and we will continue to play against the nation’s best until we are amongst them.”
Two returners are in this week’s lineup in seniors Haley Vargas and Gabriela McNelly. Vargas, who earned an individual bid into the 2023 NCAA San Antonio Regional, returns for her fifth season of competition as the NCAA froze eligibility clocks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, the San Antonio, Texas, native led the team with a 73.90 stroke average to rank third in school history, and she enters the 2023-24 campaign with the seventh-best career stroke average in K-State history at 75.83.
McNelly is in the opening-tournament lineup for a second-straight season and comes off her junior campaign in which she competed in eight events, five of which she was a member of the scoring lineup.
The senior duo is joined in the lineup by three newcomers in junior Carla Bernat and freshmen Julia Ballester Barrio and Alenka Navarro.
Bernat is a transfer from Tulane as she followed Burke and assistant coach Rinko Mitsunaga from New Orleans. A native of Castellon, Spain, Bernat was named the 2023 American Athletic Conference Women’s Golfer of the Year, a Second Team All-American by the Women’s Golf Coaches Association and an Honorable Mention All-American by Golfweek after setting the Tulane single-season stroke average record at 70.65.
Ballester Barrio also hails from Castellon, Spain, and she begins her collegiate career as one of the top amateurs in the world, as she has consistently ranked in the top 300 of the World Amateur Golf Rankings (WAGR). Navarro, a native of Mexico City, finished the 2021-22 amateur season ranked fifth in the entire country of Mexico.
K-State has competed in the Schooner Fall Classic three times in the tournament’s previous nine years. The Wildcats’ best finish was a tie for seventh place in 2015 on the heels of a Madison Talley third-place individual placing.
Of the 15 teams competing in this year’s Schooner Fall Classic, 11 schools qualified for NCAA Regional play last year with six of those teams advancing to the NCAA Championship. The Wildcats will be joined in the field by Florida State, Houston, Illinois, Iowa State, New Mexico, North Texas, host school Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Purdue, TCU, Texas State, Tulsa, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest.
Live scoring of the Schooner Fall Classic can be found at www.GolfGenius.com.
2023-09-22 15:04:56
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