The women’s Kent State golf team will once again battle in a tournament with other nationally ranked competition as they head to Boerne, Texas for the Jim West Challenge.

 The Golden Flashes head into the weekend as the highest ranked team in the tournament (seventh).

 “It’s going to be a pretty good field,” said women’s head coach Greg Robertson. “With golf, we don’t have any control with what they (the other teams) do, so we just have to go out and prepare well, play our own game and compete hard. I think if we do that we’ll be competitive. With the quality of the field, we’ll have to be on top of our game.”

 In the field at Jim West Challenge, Kent State will face three other teams ranked in the Top 25:  No. 18 Texas A&M, No. 21 Illinois and No.22 Houston.

The same five players are in Robertson’s lineup for this weekend that competed at the Mercedes Benz Intercollegiate. 

“It’s kind of hard to want to shake up the lineup after you did so well,” Robertson said. “Wad (Phaewchimplee) and Taylor (Kim) are the only two who played last year so we have three that’ll be new to the golf course and the tournament.  We just have to have a good practice round and get used to the course and go out and play.”

Senior Amira Alexander, after finishing ninth at Mercedes Benz Intercollegiate, hopes she and the team can carry the momentum into Texas.

“Hopefully we just build on what we accomplished a week and a half ago,” Alexander said. “Our motto is ‘finish strong’, so we are going to keep doing that and building on it.”

The women first tee-off on Oct. 4 and continue play on Oct. 5 and Oct. 6.

Contact Chris Yamnitsky at [email protected]