Falcons Travel West to Take Part in the Rio Verde Collegiate Invitational

Golfstat Live Scoring

Bowling Green, Ohio – After a month off from opening its 2014 spring season at the Women's Mid-American Match Play Challenge event in early February, the Bowling Green State University women's golf team will head west to compete at the Rio Verde Collegiate Invitational on March 7-9 in Rio Verde, Arizona.

The 12th annual Rio Verde Collegiate Invitational is hosted by Western Michigan and will be played at the Quail Run Golf Course at the Rio Verde Country Club. The event returns to the Quail Run course after being played on the White Wing course in 2013. The course will play to a par of 71 and a length of 6,209 yards, 51 yards shorter than it was played at in 2012.

This year's tournament field includes 18 teams, including Akron, Arkansas-Little Rock, Ball State, Bowling Green, Bradley, Eastern Michigan, Illinois State, Missouri-Kansas City, Missouri State, Montana, Northern Arizona, Northern Illinois, Ohio, Texas A&M – CC, Toledo, Western Michigan, Wichita State and Xavier.

This year's field will be comprised of 96 golfers with four out of five individual scores counting toward the team total each day. The 54-hole tournament will be played over three days, 18 holes each day. Friday begins with a 1 p.m. PT shotgun start. Saturday and Sunday are both 8 a.m. PT shotgun starts. There will be a practice round on Thursday at 1 p.m. PT as well.

Last year at the 11th annual Rio Verde Collegiate Invitational, after the first day of play was washed out and turned the event into a 36-hole tournament, the Falcons posted back-to-back rounds of 303 to finish fifth overall out of the 17 team field with a two-round combined team score of 606, +30.

This season, head coach Stephanie Young will be sending four players that competed in last year's event in Lily Bartell, Shelby Wilson, Patricia Holt and Hannah Lewis, while senior Bailey Arnold will round out the lineup for the Falcons this week.

At last year's event, Bartell carded rounds of 80 and 77 to finish in a tie for 53rd-place with a two-day score of 157, +13. However, the sophomore is coming off a strong performance at the Women's Mid-American Match Play Challenge in which she went 3-0-0 with back-to-back 4&2 wins over Northern Illinois and Bradley, before posting a come from behind 1 up win over Sathika Ruenreong of Toledo in the championship match.

Both Wilson and Holt went 1-2-0 in the Falcons spring opening match play event, as the juniors each posted a win in the NIU match to start the two-day event. Wilson registered a top-five finish at last year's Rio Verde Invitational with rounds of 72 and 75 to place in a tie for fifth overall with her score of 147, +3, while Holt turned in rounds of 75 and 76 to finish in tied for 17th with her combined 36-hole score of 151, +7.

Rounding out the Falcons' five is both Lewis and Arnold who both competed in the spring opener on February 3-4. Lewis, who went 2-0-1 with wins over Bradley and Toledo, placed in a tie for 43rd overall at the 11th Rio Verde Invitational one year ago with a score of 156, +12. Arnold, who went 1-2-0 at the match play event with a win over Paige Jordan of Bradley, will look to find her form from the 2013 fall season in which she posted a BGSU low round 68 at the Great Smokies Intercollegiate and tallied three top-20 finishes overall.

Live scoring for the three-day event will be available at www.golfstat.com.

The 2014 Rio Verde Invitational has its own Instagram account as well. Coaches and golfers of every team will be posting pictures and videos throughout the week. To follow go to @RioVerde2014 on Instagram. Fans can also tweet about this year's event by using the hash tag #RV2014.

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