The Montana State women’s golf team will travel to Litchfield Park, Arizona, for the Bell Bank Pay It Forward Collegiate on March 23 and 24. The tournament, hosted by the University of Minnesota and the University of St. Thomas, will be held at the Wigwam Golf Club Blue Course.
This event is important as it gives the Bobcats a chance to compete against new teams and prepare for the upcoming Big Sky Conference Championship. The tournament features a 54-hole format with 36 holes scheduled for Monday and the final round on Tuesday. Both days will begin with a shotgun start.
“Excited to be back at the Wigwam competing before the Big Sky Conference Championship,” Montana State head coach Brittany Basye said. “This is a new tournament for us, along with some new teams playing we haven’t seen before. The weather will be hot, but we will be prepared to stay focused on our games and stay hydrated. It’s time to be locked in – learn a lot this week from our games, what we need to be fine tuning, and get a good game plan for this golf course. It will be nice to continue seeing golf balls in the air, get some short-game prep work in, and go compete.”
Montana State joins 13 other teams including Creighton, Florida Gulf Coast, Grand Canyon, Middle Tennessee State, Minnesota, Nebraska Omaha, North Dakota, North Dakota State, South Florida, St. Thomas, UC Irvine, Utah Tech, and Western Michigan. This marks their fourth tournament of the spring season; most recently they finished eighth out of thirteen teams at the Dr. Donnis Thompson Invitational in Hawaii.
Ashleigh Wilson led Montana State individually at that event by tying for 23rd place with a total score of six-over-par 219 over three rounds. Maddie Montoya tied for 36th while Eva Heinz tied for 46th place.
The Bell Bank Pay It Forward Collegiate also serves as an early look at the course where the Big Sky Women’s Golf Championship will take place from April 20-22. Live scoring during this week’s tournament can be found at scoreboard.clippd.com.
