Sunday, February 15, 2009

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (Feb. 15, 2009) - Junior Laura Jansone (Jurmala, Latvia) fired an even par 72 in the first round of the Aztec Spring Invitational, helping the ETSU women's golf team to a seventh place showing Sunday afternoon at the Salt Creek Golf Course.

As a team, the Buccaneers are 15 strokes back of first place UC Irvine heading into Monday's second round action. No. 24-ranked Irvine is currently one stroke better than No. 28 San Jose State, while individually UC Irvine's Hillary Packard fired a 4-under 68 to hold the first round lead over San Francisco's Danielle Cyitanov by one stroke.

"It was a very solid day for everyone on the team to be in the 70s," said ETSU head coach Stefanie Shelton. "It was great to see Laura bring back her usual game, and posting 72 was awesome. We're ahead of some highly ranked teams right now like No. 30 Colorado and No. 40 Long Beach State, but we still have two days and two more rounds left, so we need to keep our focus and continue to play well."

Along with Jansone, fellow junior Kennie Leigh Eisenhower (Newport) finished tied for 27^th with a 75, while senior Lucy Gould (Bargoed, Wales) posted a 76 to tie for 35^th. Additionally, newcomer Nina Muehl (Vienna, Austria) and junior Sinead O'Sullivan (Galway, Ireland) finished tied for 40^th with a pair of 77s.

Second and third round play will continue on both Monday and Tuesday. Live scoring and statistics are available at Golfstat.com, while a complete wrap up of the day's play will be available at ETSUBucs.com.