Feb. 17, 2008

EVANSTON, Ill. -- Northwestern starts the 2008 spring season this Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 18 and 19 with its traditional-opening February tournament -- the Central District Invitational in Parrish, Fla.

The field for this annual tournament, which is hosted by Michigan State University, is usually loaded with top teams from primarily the Big Ten and Big 12 conferences, and this year is no exception. Every team in the 15-school field is ranked in the nation's top 100.

This year's field includes (with Golfweek/Sagarin ranking in parentheses): Baylor (No. 82), Indiana (No. 48), Kansas State (No. 58), Kent State (No. 17), Michigan (No. 80), Michigan State (No. 26), Missouri (No. 45), Nebraska (No. 46), Northwestern (No. 61), Notre Dame (No. 20), Ohio State (No. 43), Oklahoma (No. 34), SMU (No. 70), Texas (No. 31) and Texas A&M (No. 24).

Play begins Monday morning and two rounds will be conducted the first day. A third and final round is set for Tuesday. Live scoring is available for this tournament here.

Northwestern, which has been indoors much of the winter preparing for the spring season, did travel to California last weekend for an Alumni Shootout match in Palm Desert (Desert Falls, Marrekesh Country Club and Eldorado Country Club). It was a best-ball format with six alumni (Heather Scholten, Alice Kim, Liliana Alvarez, Jane and John Witous, and Rod Barr) competing against six current players. The alumni won the match, but head coach Chris Regenberg it was a great opportunity to get to play outdoors on some great courses.

"Any chance to get outdoors to play at this time of the year is extremely helpful to a team," said Regenberg. "Besides getting outdoors, we got a chance to play some great courses and also have some fun with our alumni. It was a great weekend.

"We're looking forward to the start of the spring and finding out right away how we stack up against several of the top teams in the Midwest."

The five players Regenberg is using for this week's tournament are: Jennifer Hong, Katie Trachok, Justina Yu, and freshmen Rebecca Lederhausen and Kelsey Lindenschmidt.