OREM, Utah – The Utah Valley University women's golf team will return to action at the GCU Invitational at Grand Canyon University Golf Course on Monday and Tuesday, March 1-2, in Phoenix.
 
The event will mark UVU's third of the condensed season and first of four that are scheduled for the month of March with events also scheduled for March 11-12 and March 15-16 in St. George, Utah and March 20-21 in Sedona, Arizona.  
 
Monday and Tuesday's GCU Invitational will be a 54-hole event with 36 holes of action scheduled for Monday and a final round of 18 on Tuesday. Action is slated to get underway each day at 8 a.m. MT with a shotgun start. Live scoring will be available throughout the tournament by visiting GolfStat.com and a limited number of parents and spectators will be allowed on site to attend the event. Please see GCULopes.com for more information. 
 
A total of 15 teams are slated to take part in the GCU Invitational with five schools from the WAC in UVU, the host GCU Lopes, California Baptist, Seattle U and UT Rio Grande Valley. Ten other schools are scheduled to participate in the event in CSU Bakersfield, Eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana State, North Dakota State, Northern Arizona, South Dakota, Southern Utah, UC Riverside and UTEP.
 
The GCU Invite will make a return to the traditional stroke play for the Wolverines after UVU last competed in match play at the Mountain Match Play Classic at the Classic Club in Palm Desert, California. There, UVU played a trio of matches against Boise State, in-state foe Southern Utah and Wyoming, and the Wolverines found themselves on the wrong end of all three matches by falling by respective scores of 3.5-2.5 to Boise State, 3.5-2.5 to SUU and 3.5-2.5 to Wyoming. In the team score race, UVU finished the event in fourth place with 7.5 total points. 
 
Despite dropping all three match play rounds, a trio of Wolverines earned two of the three individual points available in Victoria Estrada, Caylyn Ponich and Macy Robertson. Estrada and Robertson both won two of their head-to-head rounds, while Ponich picked up a win and two ties. 
 
Prior to the Mountain Match Play Classic, UVU opened the 2020-21 season with a seventh place finish out of 10 teams at The Valley Invitational in Bakersfield, California. In the stroke play tournament style event, UVU posted rounds of 323, 319 and 316 to finish with a 94-over-par 958 to finish ahead of WAC and in-state foe Dixie State, Santa Clara and the former WAC foe and host CSU Bakersfield Roadrunners.
 
Bailey Henley led UVU at the opening-season event by placing 16th with a 54-hole total of 17-over-par 233 (76-77-80). Estrada was next by taking 27th with a 21-over 237 (79-80-78).
 
On the season, the junior Henley leads UVU with a 77.67 scoring average. 
 
Henley, Estrada, Anna Lesa, Robertson and Ponich are scheduled to take part in the GCU Invite for UVU.
 
Following the GCU Invite, Utah Valley will head to St. George for both SUU's Pizza Hut Lady Thunderbird Invite on March 11-12 at Sunbrook Golf Club before taking part at the BYU Spring Classic at Sand Hollow Resort on March 15-16.