Local Sports Journal
SPRING LAKE — Five West Michigan players will be among the 79 entries Monday playing in the opening round of the 23rd Annual Golf Association of Michigan Women’s Championship.
The two-day tournament will be decided by stroke play at Spring Lake Country Club. The opening round pairings are scheduled to start play at 8:30 a.m. with the last starting time at 10:18 a.m. Monday.
Among the players in the field are former Mona Shores High School golfers Hailey Hrynewich, Morgan Smith and Kelsey McKinley; former Muskegon Catholic Central golfer Aya Johnson; and Virginia Olszewski and Kathy Eisenga, of Spring Lake.
Other entrants include Jenny Sritragul, of Bangkok, Thailand. Sritragul plays for the Michigan State University women’s golf team and recently won the Spring Lake Women’s Invitational Tournament on the same course.
Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll, of Haslett, the tournament’s 1998 winner, is among the entries in the field. Slobodnik-Stoll is the women’s golf coach at MSU.
Defending champion Shannon Warner is not listed as an entry in this year’s tournament.
Hrynewich finished 10th individually in the Mid-American Conference women’s tournament for Ohio University. She also was the GAM’s Junior Girls Player of the Year for 2013.
Johnson played six rounds for the University of Wisconsin’s women’s team last year. She also qualified for the U.S. Women’s Amateur tournament in 2013 and rounds of 80 and 72 for a 152 but not advance to the match play portion of the tournament.
The GAM Women’s Championship started in 1992, and former Muskegon prep golf star Laura Kueny won the championship in 2007 and 2008.
The tournament is open to players with handicaps of 15.4 or lower.
