Monday, April 17, 2017

PORTLAND, Ore. – With the GNAC Golf Championships less than a week away, GNAC Insider went live on Tuesday night at 7 p.m. PST to preview the event that will be played at Couer d’Alene Resort for the fifth year in a row. Montana State Billings’ Bailee Dexter and Western Washington’s Chris Hatch were on the show to preview the event along with the GNAC’s new SAAC national representative from University of Alaska Fairbanks, Sarissa Lammers.

Dexter, in her junior season, will be among the favorites to win the GNAC Championships. The Butte, Montana, native took sixth place in the GNAC Championships last year with a score of 14-over-par 156. Only two of the players that finished in front of Dexter are back for the 2017 edition of the event. This season, Dexter has helped the Yellowjackets to two first-place finishes this spring and has finished in the top 10 individually at four events. She has an average of 78.9 strokes per round, which ranks seventh in the conference so far this year.

Hatch enters the GNAC Championships ranked third in the GNAC in strokes per round at 73.1. He put together a strong performance at the UCSD SoCal Intercollegiate with a fourth-place finish, carding a 217. Last year, Hatch finished in a tie for third place at the GNAC Championships with a score of 5-under-par 208, while his teammate Brett Johnson took home the individual title. Hatch tied with Simon Fraser’s Chris Crisologo, who enters the event as the conference leader in strokes per round. Marcum is in his senior year and will be looking to help the Vikings return to the Super Regional, where they finished in 18th place last year.

Lammers joined the show as the GNAC’s new representative to the NCAA Division II National Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC). Lammers is a junior at Alaska, where she competes on the cross-country ski team and was named a Second Team All-American. She also serves on Alaska’s SAAC, which just hosted the Nanook Olympics, which is a chance for the Nanook student-athletes to compete in other sports against each other. Lammers will serve as the GNAC’s representative for two years after replacing Simon Fraser’s Ryan Yewchin.