SPARTANBURG, S.C. – Furman set a league record with six players earning All-Southern Conference honors in a combination of voting of the conference's nine women's golf coaches and Golfstat rankings. SoCon Championship medalist and league freshman of the year Natalie Srinivasan of Furman and SoCon Player of the Year Loy Hee Ying of ETSU highlight the 10-member team.
Loy, Srinivasan and Furman's Alice Chen, Haylee Harford and Taylor Totland automatically earned spots on the all-conference team as the top five league golfers in the Golfstat rankings. The remaining spots on the all-conference team were voted on by the coaches, who were not permitted to vote for their own student-athletes. ETSU's Linda Dobele, Furman's Carly Burkhardt and Reona Hirai, Mercer's Hannah Mae Deems and Chattanooga's Monica San Juan round out the team.
Srinivasan also headlined the five-member all-freshman team, which also included Furman teammate Burkhardt, ETSU's Ankita Kedlaya, Mercer's Lauren Lightfritz and Chattanooga's Holly Morgan.
The coaches voted on individual awards at the conclusion of the SoCon Women's Golf Championship, with Furman's Jeff Hull being named SoCon Coach of the Year in addition to Loy being named SoCon Player of the Year and Srinivasan being voted SoCon Freshman of the Year. Hull, in his first year at the helm, led the 10th-ranked Paladins to their third straight SoCon tournament title and their record 16th overall.
Loy, who tied for fourth at the SoCon Championship, earned all-conference honors for the second time in as many seasons. The sophomore from Baru, Kulaijaya, Malaysia, who leads the SoCon with a 72.21 stroke average, has posted eight top-10 finishes in 10 events this academic year, including a pair of wins in the spring. Her first-round 7-under 65 at the River Landing Classic was the lowest score by a SoCon golfer in at least the last 12 seasons and helped her to her first collegiate win.
She is ETSU's first-ever SoCon Player of the Year in women's golf.
Srinivasan is the fourth consecutive Paladin to earn the league's top freshman honor, following in the footsteps of current teammates Totland (2014), Chen (2015) and Harford (2016). Already in the Golfstat top five in the league before the SoCon tournament, the freshman from Spartanburg, South Carolina, solidified her all-conference resume with a dominant effort at the championship, posting a 3-under-par 69 in the first round and a 2-under 70 in the second of the rain-shortened event to cruise to a four-shot win over runner-up Chen. The win was the first of Srinivasan's young collegiate career.
Furman's Chen posted her third runner-up finish at the SoCon Championship in as many attempts. The Princeton, New Jersey, junior held a share of the of the first-round lead with Srinivasan and Loy and was one of just two players to finish the tournament under par, at 1-under. She turned in five top-five finishes this season, including one win and a trio of second-place showings. Chen earned all-conference honors for the third straight season.
Furman's Totland becomes just the ninth player in SoCon history to earn all-conference honors four times. The senior from Tinton Falls, New Jersey, is the only player in league history to finish in the top three at the SoCon Championship, which dates back to 1994, four times. Totland, who won the event in 2015, finished runner-up in 2014 and in third the last two seasons. She is third in the SoCon in stroke average this year at 72.58 and turned in five top-10 finishes on the season.
Harford is the SoCon's top-ranked golfer nationally, as the sophomore from Leavittsburg, Ohio, checks in at No. 36 in the Golfstat rankings. Second in the league in scoring average at 72.31, she earns her second straight all-conference nod. She finished in the top 10 seven times in 2016-17, including a trio of first-place finishes. She tied for sixth at the SoCon tournament and won the league's Pinnacle Award, which goes to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative GPA on the championship-winning team.
The selections of Furman's Hirai, who earned all-conference honors for the second time (2015), and Burkhardt, who finished 10th in her inaugural SoCon Championship, give the Paladins six all-conference performers, breaking the record of five they set back in 2015.
ETSU senior Dobele joins teammate Loy to give the Bucs two all-conference selections for the second straight year. Dobele finished third this year at the Web.com Intercollegiate to help the Bucs to the team win and tied for 11th at the SoCon tournament.
Mercer's Deems earned her first All-SoCon selection after a season in which she finished ninth in the league in scoring average and turned in four top-10 finishes. Chattanooga's San Juan wrapped up season eighth in the league in scoring average and posted a pair of top-10 finishes, including tying for fourth at the SoCon Championship with Loy.
Morgan, whose selection gives Chattanooga an all-freshman pick for the third straight season, and Mercer's Lightfritz finished 12th and 13th, respectively, in the SoCon in scoring average. Kedlaya gives ETSU an all-freshman selection for a third straight season.
2017 All-Southern Conference team
Linda Dobele, Sr., ETSU
Loy Hee Ying, So., ETSU
Carly Burkhardt, Fr., Furman
Alice Chen, Jr., Furman
Haylee Harford, So., Furman
Reona Hirai, Jr., Furman
Natalie Srinivasan, Fr., Furman
Taylor Totland, Sr., Furman
Hannah Mae Deems, Jr., Mercer
Monica San Juan, So., Chattanooga
2017 Southern Conference All-Freshman team
Ankita Kedlaya, ETSU
Carly Burkhardt, Furman
Natalie Srinivasan, Furman
Lauren Lightfritz, Mercer
Holly Morgan, Chattanooga
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