Saturday, September 30, 2006

            WAYNESVILLE, N.C. (Sept. 30, 2006) - A year ago, the ETSU women's golf team finished second to host school and former Southern Conference rival Western Carolina at the Great Smokies Intercollegiate. This year, the Buccaneers decided to see what it felt like at the top of the leaderboard.

            Powered by a 1-under-par 71 and first-place showing from sophomore Lucy Gould (Bargoed, Wales), ETSU fired a school record for first round score with a 289 Saturday at the Waynesville Country Club and currently leads Western Carolina by three strokes in the team competition. Along with Gould, the Bucs had three other players finish in the Top 11, with true freshmen Sinead O'Sullivan (Galway, Ireland) and Laura Jansone (Jurmala, Latvia) tying for fifth at even-par and junior Natalia Giraldo (Cali, Colombia) tying for 11^th at 2-over 74.

            ETSU head coach Stefanie Reynolds, whose team has one tournament victory already this fall season, said her team's mentality this season is much different than in year's past.

            "Having the depth we have this year, there's just more competition among the players themselves, and when we get into competition that carries over," Reynolds said. "The freshmen continue to really step up and play well, and Lucy really had a great day. Western has really dominated this event because only two other teams have ever won it. Hopefully we can seal the deal tomorrow. That would be huge for us."

            Gould is currenly tied at the top with Austin Peay's Staci Lynch and Western Carolina's duo of Kandy Carland and Malin Fryk. Western Carolina also placed three players in the top five to post a team score of 292. The Catamounts lead Atlantic Sun Conference member and third-place Gardner-Webb by 10 strokes.

            Final round play will begin Sunday morning. Visit ETSUBucs.com at the conclusion of the day's play for a complete wrap up.