TUNICA, Miss. – It is onto the South/Southeast Regional for the Lee women's golf team. The Lady Flames placed third in the annual Gulf South Conference Championship which was played at the Tunica National Golf and Tennis Club. The 54-hole event was won by West Florida. The Argonauts posted a +14 on Saturday and finished with a 59-over par total. Montevallo came out of nowhere to place second. The Falcons tied the Argos with a +14 on Saturday and finished with a 71-over total.

The Lady Flames battled the entire 54 holes and on Saturday posted a +22 and slipped to third with their 73-over total. Union's Aubrey Payne also had her problems during the final round and came in with a +3 75 but still managed to win the medalist honors. Montevallo's Fabiola DeCespedes was tied for second with West Florida's Millie Thompson. The twosome finished second despite DeCespedes having a round of 81 and Thompson an even higher round of 83.

Lee's Haley Blevins recovered from a tough round on Friday and tied Banthita "Pearl" Phoncharatkun for the program's best scores on Saturday, each had a 3-over 75. "Pearl" finished seventh overall in the tourney and Blevins climbed all the way back up to ninth. Olivia Ireland added a 4-over 76, good enough for 12th place. Lehane Louis-Dumond followed with a 6-over 78 and a 13th finish. It was certainly not the week that Hannah Nall had hoped for. She finished the event with an 81 and placed 18th.

The Lady Flames will return to campus and begin to get back to work immediately as they prepare for the regional which will be staged in Gainesville, Ga. on May 5-7.

Coach Geandra Almeida's thoughts:
"We severely underperformed as a team this week. We have too much talent to be posting the scores we did. Once again, we had a poor start and finish, and we never managed to put pressure on anyone today. Hopefully, we will learn from this and let the disappointment fuel us to give our best over the next two weeks. There is still time to do something special at regionals."