Bauer Earns Invitation to NCAA Central Regional
4/26/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Golf
April 26, 2010
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- University of Michigan women's golf senior captain Ashley Bauer (Grand Blanc, Mich./Grand Blanc HS) was selected Monday (April 26) as an invited individual participant for the 2010 NCAA Central Regional. The Central Regional will be Thursday through Saturday, May 6-8, at Ottercreek Golf Course, Columbus, Ind., hosted by Indiana. The Wolverines as a team were not selected for an at-large bid.
Bauer, who is making her third NCAA appearance, was one of just three individuals invited to play in the Central Regional, joining Drake's Olivia Lansing and Missouri's Julia Potter.
"Clearly this exciting for me, but it is going to be hard not being there with my teammates," said Bauer. "This is my third trip to the NCAA and it's a chance to continue my career and I am thankful for that. I am going to work as hard as I can over the next week and a half and then go into the regional and give it my all. We will just have to see what happens. I am very happy for this chance to keep playing for Michigan and I will do everything I can to represent this program well."
The NCAA Central Regional will feature 24 teams as well as the three individuals. Selected teams for the 2010 Central Regional include: Arizona State, USC, Purdue, Michigan State, Georgia, Denver, New Mexico, Florida State, Oklahoma State, Louisville, Oregon, Kent State, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Mississippi, San Diego State, Baylor, Tulsa, N.C. State, Indiana, Illinois State, Murray State, Detroit and Jackson State.
The top eight teams and the top two individuals not on a qualifying team will advance to the NCAA Championship Tuesday through Friday, May 18-21, at the Country Club of Landfall in Wilmington, N.C. The two other regional sites are East at the Ironwood Country Club in Greenville, N.C. and West at the Stanford Golf Course in Palo Alto, Calif.
In her final season, Bauer, who was an All-Big Ten first team selection, has started all 11 tournaments to extend her consecutive streak to 47 straight events, not missing a tournament in her four seasons in Ann Arbor. She leads U-M with a 72.79 average during the 2009-10 campaign, on pace to break the school single-season record by more than two strokes. She has one individual title among seven top-10 finishes and four top-five finishes this season, and she has finished as the top Wolverine in nine of U-M's 11 events.
Bauer highlighted her season at the 2010 Big Ten Championships by finishing as the medalist runner-up with a U-M 72-hole tournament record of five-under 283. The runner-up finish equals the best ever by a Wolverine at the conference event. En route to the record-breaking score, Bauer crushed the U-M record for a single-round total with a seven-under 65 in the second round, becoming the first Wolverine to shoot below 68.
Bauer holds virtually every U-M record, including single-round score (65, -7), 18-hole tournament (68, -3), 36-hole tournament (148, shared), 54-hole tournament (209, -4) and 72-hole tournament (283, -5). In 47 career events, she has posted 28 top-20 finishes, with 20 finishes in the top 10 and 10 in the top five. Bauer has helped U-M to five team titles in her career and has won two collegiate events, the 2008 Wolverine Invitational and the 2010 Rio Verde Collegiate Invitational. Her current single-season (72.79) and career (75.59) scoring averages are the best in school history.
Michigan has been represented in NCAA regional competition by the U-M team or an individual in eight of the last 10 seasons, making team appearances in 2001, '02, '05, '07 and '09. With Bauer's invitation, she joins Laura Olin (2004) and Amy Schmucker (2006) as regional individual selections. In 2002, the Wolverines finished sixth at the central regional in East Lansing, Mich., to advance to their first NCAA Finals appearance, where the Maize and Blue finished 17th.
Contact: Tom Wywrot (734) 763-4423
