Park (Mo.) Travels to NAIA Women's Golf Championship in San Diego

May 16, 2008

PARKVILLE, Mo. - Park University's women's golf program will make school history Tuesday in the opening round of the 2008 NAIA Women's Golf Championships at Lake San Marcos Country Club in San Diego, Calif.

The Pirates won the NAIA Region IV Tournament April 28-29 for the first time in program history, knocking off Southwestern College by 16 strokes to claim the team title.

Ashley Nicks fired an opening round 83 but added a second-day 79 to finish second in the tournament at 162, and the Pirates got a spark in the opening round from Nicole Wiehe, who shot 86 at Sunflower Hills Golf Course, marking her best single-round score of the 2008 season and tying her career-best single-round collegiate performance.

Wiehe shot 86 twice last season - first in McPherson, Kan., at the Central Christian Invitational and again at the Region IV tournament in Bonner Springs. She also had an 87 last season in Oklahoma at the MCAC Championship.

In addition to Nicks and Wiehe, Roxanne Jensen, Allison Vaughn and Nicole Ainsworth will compete for the Pirates in San Diego, with Amy Hollander and Nichole Wessel serving as alternates for the tournament.

Jensen, Vaughn and Ainsworth all finished in the top 10 at the region tournament, with Jensen taking sixth, Vaughn eighth and Ainsworth ninth in the two-day event.

LONG DRIVE COMPETITION
Park University's Ashley Nicks has been entered in the NAIA Women's Golf Long Drive Competition. According to the NAIA's Web site (www.naia.org), the preliminaries for the NAIA long drive competition will take place during Monday's practice round. The top 5 will advance to the finals Monday following the practice round. Only one player per team may compete. Individual qualifiers are also eligible to participate in the long-drive competition.

PIRATES SIGN BLUE SPRINGS SOUTH SENIOR
Park University head coach Kelly DeFeo signed Blue Springs South High School senior Plern Promboobpa to a letter of intent to play for the Pirates, beginning in the 2008-09 season. Promboobpa, a foreign-exchange student from Thailand, took fourth in the Missouri Class 2 State Championship last fall. Promboobpa fired a pair of 77's to cap a senior season that saw two stretches of tournament titles, including four-straight midway through the season.

NICKS PINS DOWN FIVE WINS IN EIGHT APPEARANCES IN 2008
Park University senior Ashley Nicks has been a force in NAIA women's golf in the 2008 season, carding five tournament victories in seven appearances, including a win last week at the MCAC Championships in Lawrence, Kan., earning the title of MCAC Player of the Year. Nicks also has one second-place finish, coming in the fall at William Jewell. In seven tournaments and 10 rounds this season, Nicks has averaged 82.9 strokes per round, clipping the 80-stroke mark twice on the year, firing back-to-back 78's to win both the Ottawa Invitational, an 18-hole event, and the William Woods Invitational, which was rain-shortened to 18 holes from the original 36-hole format.

PARK CAPTURES SECOND-STRAIGHT MCAC championship
Park women's golf earned its second-straight MCAC women's championship last week, defeating competitors from Peru State and Central Christian to earn the team title with a two-day score of 730.

Ashley Nicks earned player of the year honors in the MCAC, while head coach Kelly DeFeo was named coach of the year by her peers in the MCAC. Park also got a strong finish from Nicole Wiehe in the tournament, taking second place with rounds of 96 and 91 to finish with 187, 15 shots off Nicks' pace atop the tourney leaderboard. Park also had a third-place finish from Roxanne Jensen.