Kentucky Women’s Golf Back in Action at the Spartan Sun Coast Invitational Sunday, Monday

SARASOTA, Fla. – Just a week-and-a-half after making a championship run at the Paradise Invitational, the University of Kentucky women’s golf team is back for its second of five regular-season tournaments this spring at the Spartan Sun Coast Invitational at the Palm Aires Champions Course (par 72, 6,191 yards) in Sarasota, Florida.

The Wildcats will play 36 holes on Sunday with an 8:15 a.m. ET shotgun start, and the tournament concludes with 18 holes on Monday with an 8:30 a.m. ET shotgun start.

The Spartan Sun Coast Invitational is the first of three two-day, 54-hole tournaments for the team this season.

The 15-team field features 12 teams ranked among the top 60 in the latest NCAA Rankings in Division I and one school among the top 10 in Division II.

Those teams include Michigan State (50), Clemson (36), College of Charleston (52), Florida International, Illinois (48), Iowa, Kent State (28), Kentucky (30), Maryland, Michigan (53), Northwestern (23), Ohio State (45), Oklahoma (27), Princeton (47) and Purdue (55).

Fans can follow along with live scoring here: https://scoreboard.clippd.com/tournaments/239138/scoring/team.

The Wildcats will sport its third different lineup this season, and it got just a touch older.

Sophomore Anastasia Hekkonen is back in the one spot after leading the team to a runner-up finish in the spring debut. She is followed by junior Cathryn Brown, sophomore Karlie Campbell and sophomore C.A. Carter. Finally, junior Sammy Paradise will fill the five spot for the event, her first time appearing in the lineup.

Hekkonen, Brown, Campbell and Carter are coming off a runner-up performance after a season-best, 6-under tournament total at the Paradise Invitational in early February. Three players finished in the top 10 on the individual leaderboard, which was 90 players deep, including Hekkonen at T3 and Brown and Campbell at T7.

UK reeled in season-best eight rounds of par-or-better there.

Paradise, a junior transfer out of Daytona State College, competed as an individual at the Paradise Invitational, turning in scores of 72, 78 and 73 to go just 7-over for T40. She spent the previous two seasons competing at the junior college level, where she earned a 72.7 stroke average as a freshman and a 73.6 stroke average as a junior. She was twice named a National Junior College Athletic Association All-American, including first team in 2024-25.

The Wildcats played in the Spartan Sun Coast Invitational last season, too, finishing tied for ninth place with a 13-over tournament total, their third-best tournament total of the season. Brown, just a sophomore at the time, earned a T3 finish in the stacked field with scores of 68, 69 and 75.

The field can expect temperature in the mid-70s with sunny skies Sunday, while there is a thunderstorm threat on Monday.

For the latest on the Kentucky women’s golf team, follow the team on X, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as on the web at UKathletics.com.