ANDERSON, S.C. – After finishing in a tie for seventh place at last week's NCAA Women's Golf South Region Championship in Cleveland, Tenn., Anderson University freshman Victoria Hall is set to make school history by competing at the 2019 NCAA Division II Women's Golf National Championships.
The Championship will be hosted by Palm Beach Atlantic at the PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., Tuesday - Saturday, on a par-73, 6,081-yard layout and will consist of both team and individual competition conducted concurrently. Sixteen teams and sixteen individuals will compete for team and individual championships over 54 holes and championship head-to-head medal play format.
Following 54 holes of stroke play, an individual champion will be declared along with finishers 2-10 on Thursday.
The top eight teams after 54 holes of play will then be placed into a bracket and seeded based on 54-hole scores, with the team semifinal round on Friday and the finals occurring on Saturday.
Hall is the first golfer in school history – men's or women's - to make an appearance on the national stage. Former men's standout Adam Sheriff ended his career at AU by competing in the 2009 NCAA Super Regional in Muscle Shoals, Ala. – which combined college golfers from the south and southeast regions - while narrowly missing out on garnering a spot in the National Championships.
Hall, who finished the opening round of the NCAA South Regional in a deadlock for 27th place after carding a 4-over-par 76, steadily moved up over the final two days. The Byrnes High School product leapt 10 spots into a five-way tie for 17th on Tuesday and soared yet another 10 spots during Wednesday's final round after firing a career-best 1-under-par 71. She finished in a four-way tie for seventh place as one of only four players to card a below-par score during the final round.
Her final-round effort helped propel Hall to her lowest three-round score of the year (221). She enters the National Championships with four top-10 finishes during the year, including back-to-back fourth-place showings at the Illinois Springfield Island Getaway and the Battle at Hilton Head. Hall carries a 76.61 unadjusted stroke average through 23 rounds into the Championships.
Joining the Moore, S.C. native in the Sunshine State for the three-day, 54-hole event will be the qualifiers from the other regions (Central, East and West) along with last week's top four teams from the South (Lynn, Limestone, Barry and Florida Tech). Saint Leo's Isabel Nesteus and Izzy Lawrence, and Tampa's Sofia Cadavid were the other three individual qualifiers from last week's regional.
Live scoring will be available for all three rounds, with tee times set for 8 a.m. each morning.