Spartans Host 32nd Annual Mary Fossum Invitational This Weekend
9/11/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Golf
EAST LANSING, Mich. â€" The Michigan State women's golf team opens the 2015-16 season this weekend (Saturday-Sunday) by hosting the 32nd annual Mary Fossum Invitational at Forest Akers West Golf Course.
In addition to the host Spartans, the 12-team field for this year's Fossum Invitational includes Akron, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Ferris State, Grand Valley State, Ohio, Notre Dame, Oakland, Toledo, Tulane and Western Michigan.
The tournament begins Saturday with two rounds, starting with a shotgun start at 8:30 a.m. The third and final round is set for Sunday with a shotgun start at 8:30 a.m. Live scoring of the entire tournament will be available at birdiefire.com. The format will be five players in the starting lineup for each team, with the top-four scores counting toward the team total.
The Spartans have won their home tournament eight out of the last 12 years, with victories in the 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2013 Mary Fossum Invitationals, and the 2006 Lady Northern Invitational. Overall, MSU has won the Mary Fossum Invitational 10 times.
"This tournament means a lot to me personally and for the program," said MSU head coach Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll. "Just to say thank you to Mary for the opportunity she gave me, not only to play golf but also to be a coach here. I'm just honored and humbled about the things I get to do every day and that building behind you (new Lasch Family Golf Center) is certainly all because of her and Bruce and what they built here in the early years, and Casey (Lubahn) and I are just trying to carry on that tradition."
After fielding a starting lineup last season that included two true freshmen, a red-shirt freshman, and a junior transfer, the Spartans will be counting on that experience this season. MSU graduated just one senior (Lindsey McPherson) from its six-person starting lineup at the 2015 Big Ten Championships.
Leading the way is senior Gabby Yurik, who was a first-team All-Big Ten selection in 2014-15 and qualified individually for the NCAA Central Regional after finishing her junior season with a team-best 75.33 scoring average. For her career, Yurik owns a 75.88 scoring average in 51 rounds with five top-10 finishes and seven top-20 finishes.
Prior to the NCAA Central Regional, Yurik had posted a career-low score in five consecutive tournaments. She tied for 12th at the Big Ten Championships with a 3-over 219 and led the team with 10 birdies in the tournament. She had three top-10 finishes, including a career-best fifth at the Lady Buckeye Invitational.
Sophomore Sarah Burnham closed her first season in East Lansing with one of the best freshmen single-season scoring averages in program history at 76.27, which also ranked second on the team in 2014-15. She started in all 10 of MSU's tournaments and finished third on the team with 54 birdies.
Over the summer, Burnham won the Minnesota Match Play State Championship and the Minnesota State Four-Ball Championship. She also competed in the U.S. Women's Amateur in August and the U.S. Women's Open in July. She tied for third at both the Minnesota Women's State Open Championship during the first week of August and the Canadian Amateur in late July.
"I'm very excited for our team this year and I hope we can improve," said Burnham. "It's great to start out on our home course. Last year, I felt like we were a very new team overall. The starting line, we lost four of our starters the year before. I think that was a little bit of struggle and just knowing everybody now (will help), and we're playing the same team as last year."
In addition to Yurik and Burnham, senior Alison Knowles was also named to the Big Ten Golfers to Watch List by the conference office. Knowles, who transferred from Louisiana-Monroe and was eligible for the 2015 spring season, started in all six spring tournaments for the Spartans and ranked fourth on the team with a 76.83 scoring average (1,383 strokes in 18 rounds). She also ranked fourth on the team with 39 birdies. Knowles was named the 2014 Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year while she was at ULM after recording a 73.03 stroke average as a sophomore.
Redshirt sophomore Katie Sharp, who started in the team's final five tournaments of the season, is also looking to have a big second season in the starting lineup after compiling a 77.14 scoring average in 2014-15. She tied for 10th at the Lady Buckeye Invitational and tied for 21st at the Big Ten Championships.
Sophomore Jacqueline Setas played in eight tournaments as a true freshman and will round out the starting lineup for the Spartans this weekend.
In addition to the starting lineup, the Spartans will also have several players competing individually in the tournament this weekend.
"Well, I think when you look at Sarah Burnham and what she did this summer, playing in the U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, finished third in the Canadian Amateur, won the Minnesota Match play, she just had an incredible summer," said Slobodnik-Stoll. "And then Katie Sharp had a great summer. Those young kids have a year under their belt, we have five young freshmen coming in, and they're getting their feet wet and obviously with Gabby's leadership, it should be an exciting year for us, we're looking forward to it."
While the Spartans are preparing for the new season, construction crews are continuing their work on the Lasch Family Golf Center, an 18,000-square-foot building that will include an indoor practice area, student-athlete lounge, men's and women's locker rooms, coaches' offices, video room and a kitchen area featuring nutrition/hydration stations. Construction is scheduled to be completed by January 2016. Earlier this summer in June, Richard W. (Rick) and Suzanne Lasch of East Lansing made a $2 million gift toward the facility.
"It's very exciting," said Burnham. "I can't wait to see our new putting green inside and our new locker rooms and kitchen, so it makes me want to work harder, because I know people in the years past have worked hard to get us that building. I'm just grateful for their hard work and I hope I can continue that with this program so others in the future can get nice stuff as I do right now."
As Slobodnik-Stoll enters her 19th season as head coach in East Lansing, she is excited as ever to get the new year started.
"I think when you have a true passion and love for something, that excitement comes very easily," she said. "I just feel so fortunate to be in the position or in the role that I really think I was meant to be in for my life. I'm doing what I was supposed to do and just wearing the green and white and representing the green and white and knowing how many people we get to effect on a daily basis, it's just a rewarding feeling as well as having an impact on young student-athletes. It's just so much fun to watch them grow and mature and not only get better in golf, but they get better in everything during their time at Michigan State because we're providing them so many opportunities to be successful, so it's a very rewarding career."
ABOUT MARY FOSSUM
Mary Fossum was the first and only head coach in the history of Spartan women's golf prior to 1997, coaching from 1973 until her retirement. For 17 of those years, Fossum was part of a unique coaching pair as her husband, Bruce, coached the MSU men's team for 25 seasons before his retirement in 1989. Bruce passed away in March 2014 at the age of 86.
Under Fossum's guidance, the Spartans won an unprecedented five straight Big Ten titles from 1974-78 and played in six consecutive AIAW National Championships (1973-78). The Spartans regained the conference crown in 1982 and played in the 1982 and 1984 NCAA Championships. MSU claimed its third conference runner-up spot under Fossum at the 1987 Big Ten Championship.
Those accomplishments led to recognition of Fossum as one of the country's best collegiate golf coaches. She was honored as the first-ever NCAA Midwest Region Coach of the Year in 1984 and was inducted into the Golf Coaches Hall of Fame in 1988. In 1999, Michigan State's annual fall women's golf tournament was renamed the Mary Fossum Invitational. In January of 1998, Fossum was honored by the College Golf Foundation with the Rolex/Gladys Palmer Meritorious Service Award for outstanding service and contributions to collegiate women's golf. She was inducted into the MSU Athletics Hall of Fame on Sept. 27, 2003. In 2007, the Big Ten named its award for the women's golfer with the lowest stroke-average to par in a season the Mary Fossum Award.
A native of Green Bay, Wisconsin, Fossum won the Wisconsin women's golf championship in 1945, 1946 and 1947. One of the many highlights of her career was her match-play victory over Mildred (Babe) Didrikson-Zaharias in the 1946 Women's Western Amateur semifinals. Fossum was inducted in 1990 into the Wisconsin Golf Hall of Fame, making her only the fifth woman to achieve that distinction. Fossum also was involved at the national level, serving as a member of the NCAA golf committee which guides the national development and administration of women's collegiate golf.
She earned the Michigan Women's Golf Association Lifetime Achievement Award in May 2014.
Players Mentioned
