Boiling Springs, N.C. - The Gardner-Webb women's golf team is set to compete at the 2013 Big South Women's Golf Championship presented by Musco Sports Lighting hosted by Presbyterian College on April 14-16th at The Patriot Golf Club in Ninety-Six, S.C.

The Runnin' Bulldog golf team earned the No. 4 seed with its current GolfStat national ranking of 125 and is slated to tee off the first round of play on the front nine beginning at 8:50 a.m. on Sunday morning.

Head Coach Tee Burton and the women's golf team will send a very familiar lineup to the conference championship tournament next week, as the lineup will consist of seniors Meghan Allum, Hannah Hellyer, Lauren Smith and Sammy Vass, as well as freshman Mary Katherine Donovan, who will be teeing off in her first-ever Big South Conference Championship event.

Allum, like the both Hellyer and Smith, will be competing in her fourth Big South Conference Championship event where she has finished in 16th-place or better in all three previous postseason tournaments. Allum, who finished in 12th-place at last year's championship with a combined score of 233, +17, has played in all 10 events this season for the Runnin' Bulldogs, posting six top-10 finishes and a team-best stroke average of 77.32 over 19 rounds of play.

Hellyer, who is a two-time Big South All-Conference performer, is returning to The Patriot Golf Club where she took second-place overall in 2011 and fifth-place in 2012. The senior from Stirling, Ontario, Canada, has played in nine tournaments on the year for GWU, posting a season-best second-place finish at the Highlander Invitational with a two-round combined score of 146, +2, back in September. Hellyer has posted a stroke average of 78.65 over 17 rounds of golf on the year.

Smith, who earned Big South All-Conference honors back in 2011 with her sixth-place overall finish, has competed in nine tournaments on the year for the Runnin' Bulldogs after being forced to withdraw from the Low Country Intercollegiate on March 25th. The four-year golfer has recorded six top-15 finishes on the season and is second on the team with a 77.56 stroke average heading into play next week at the 2013 Big South Championships.

Vass, who transferred to Gardner-Webb from the University of Central Florida in 2010-11, will be playing for the Runnin' Bulldogs for the third straight year at the Big South Championships having posted a 10th-place finish in 2011 and a 20th-place finish in 2012. The senior from Tain, Scotland, has played in all 10 events for GWU on the year, posting a 12th-place finish at the GWU vs. HPU Duals in the fall and a 15th-place showing at the C&F Bank Intercollegiate this spring. Vass enters play this week with a stroke average of 79.05 on the season.

Rounding out the field for the Runnin' Bulldogs is Donovan, a freshman from Hampstead, N.C. Donovan, who has played in all 10 tournaments either for Gardner-Webb or as an individual on the year, has two first-place finishes at the Terrier Intercollegiate and the GWU vs. HPU Duals. On the season, Donovan has posted a GWU low round of 68, -4 under par, and has posted a stroke average of 80.21 overall.

As a program, the Runnin' Bulldogs have played in four Big South Women's Golf Championship Tournaments since joining the League in the summer of 2008 and have finished no lower than fifth-place overall in the team standings.

After posting back-to-back fifth-place team finishes in 2009 and 2010, the Runnin' Bulldogs turned in a second-place team finish in 2011, finishing with a final team score of 930, +66, 18 strokes behind first-place finisher Coastal Carolina.

Last season, Gardner-Webb posted a third-place finish with a combined three-round score of 921, +57.

The 2013 Big South Women's Golf Championship presented by Musco Sports Lighting begins this weekend with a practice round on Saturday, April 13. The three-day, 54-hole event will be played April 14-16 and is free and open to the public.

In addition, fans can follow the action online via GolfStat's "Live Scoring" feature.

The 2013 champion will receive the Big South's automatic berth to the NCAA Regionals.

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