INDIANAPOLIS – The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) announced their field of 29 teams for the 2023 NCAA Division III Women's Golf National Championships with the University of Redlands Women's Golf team leading the field as the No. 1 seed.
They are the top seed thanks to one of the most difficult schedules in the country as they had to receive one of only five at-large bids in order to make the tournament after finishing second to Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) at the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) Championships, which gave the Sagehens the conference's automatic qualifying spot.
Along with the competitive schedule, Redlands has also been ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in the country in every Women's Golf Coaches Association (WGCA) poll and Golfstat ranking since last September, which the committee showed was more valuable than three rounds to end the regular season.
The National Championships will be held at the Mission Hills Resort in Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida next Tuesday, May 9 through Friday, May 12. Joining the Bulldogs from SCIAC is No. 6 Pomona-Pitzer and No. 7 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS).
Redlands will be in familiar territory as they won the Division III Preview last September on the same course the national championships will be played. During the two-round tournament they beat out current championship field programs No. 3 (Washington University), No. 5 (Carnegie Mellon), No. 8 (Washington & Lee), No. 9 (Methodist University), No. 10 (University of Texas at Dallas), and No. 21 (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology) seeds.
Kendall Nicholson (Bellevue, WA) was the Division III Preview tournament runner-up while Hannah Jugar (Chula Vista, CA) was tied for eighth as the Bulldogs finished eight strokes clear of University of Texas at Dallas.
Heading into the National Championships the Bulldogs have the most golfers in Golfstat's Top-18 (three) with Jugar ranked No. 5, Nicholson ranked No. 14, and Andrea York (Oakdale, CA) at No. 18. The other two golfers ranked include No. 49 Iris Liu (Diamond Bar, CA), who is a two-time All-American and first-year Jizelle Robledo (La Habra, CA) at No. 77.
Next week Redlands will look to take a step forward from their 2022 Runner-Up finish and win the program's first National Championship Title.