MITCHELL, S.D. – The Dakota Wesleyan University women's golf team is gearing up for the 2015 NAIA National Tournament set to start at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday at Savannah Quarters Country Club in Pooler, Ga., but Monday brought several individual honors for the Tigers.
The 2015 Great Plains Athletic Conference All-Conference Team list was littered with Tigers, as four DWU golfers picked up honors, it was announced Monday.
Junior Lauren Fitts (Brookings, S.D.), sophomore April Barnett (Lakeview, Texas), freshman Kristin Sabers (Mitchell, S.D.) and senior Tiera Feller (Blunt, S.D.) were each named to the All-Conference Team, while Fitts earned her third consecutive Hauff Mid-America Sports/GPAC Golfer-of-the-Year.
The GPAC All-Conference Team included four Tigers for a second straight season after DWU captured its seventh straight conference championship. The Tigers dominated the GPAC season, topping the field by 82 strokes, while four of the team's golfers finished in the top seven on the individual leaderboard.
Fitts took the individual title with a four-round total of 323, seven strokes better than Concordia University's Amy Ahlers. After falling back in the second qualifier in the fall, Fitts put everything together in the spring. She earned three GPAC Women's Golfer-of-the-Week honors in the spring with her top performance coming at the spring-opening Heritage Classic in Louisville, Ky. At the event, Fitts tied the DWU 18-hole scoring record (69) and the 36-hole record (146), both held by former Tiger Dani Bellet.
The All-Conference honor is the second straight for Barnett. She finished tied for fifth at the GPAC Championships with teammate Sabers, who is in her first season with the team. Sabers is also a member of the DWU women's basketball team and earned an All-GPAC Honorable Mention for basketball earlier this season. Rounding out the list of Tigers is Feller, who earned her first All-GPAC honor with a seventh-place finish at the league championships.