Boiling Springs, N.C. - The Gardner-webb men's golf team will head south to compete at the 2013 Big South Conference Men's Golf Championship hosted by Gardner-Webb University on April 21-23 at The Patriot Golf Club in Ninety Six, S.C.

The Runnin' Bulldogs earned the No. 5 seed with its current GolfStat national ranking of 159 and is scheduled to tee off the first round of play on the front nine at approximately 8:30 a.m. on Sunday morning.

Gardner-Webb head coach Tee Burton will send out a familiar lineup next week at the Championship, as Daniel Kim, Matt Yelverton, Daley Byles, Steven Jones and Elki Kow will comprise the team for the Runnin' Bulldogs at the 54-hole, three-day event.

Kim, the lone senior in the group for the Runnin' Bulldogs, will be teeing-off in his fourth straight Big South Championship Tournament having posted a 14th-place finish or better in each of the previous three years. The three-time Big South All-Conference honoree has posted back-to-back top-five finishes at the Big South Championship, as he recorded a second-place finish last season after finishing in fourth-place back in 2011. Kim, who has been the top-GWU performer in eight of the Runnin' Bulldogs 12 tournaments this year, has recorded seven top-10 finishes on the season, including finishing tied for first at the Raines Development Intercollegiate and turning in a third-place showing at the GWU versus HPU Duals.

Kim enters the tournament with a team-best stroke average of 73.39 on the year and has carded a low round 68, -4 under par, twice this season.

Yelverton, a sophomore who has played in all 12 tournaments this season for the Runnin' Bulldogs, will be competing in his second postseason conference championship after finishing in a tie at 34th-place last year. Yelverton has posted three top-five finishes on the season, as the finished tied for first-place overall at the Raines Development Intercollegiate, took fourth-place at the GWU versus HPU Duals and earned a second-place finish at the 2013 Keith Hills Invitational. Yelverton, who has played in all 21 events for GWU over the last two years, has carded a low round 67 on the season, as well as a score of 69 on three different occasions throughout the year.

Like both Kim and Yelverton, Byles has teed-off for the Runnin' Bulldogs in all 12 tournaments this season, finishes as the top-GWU performer at both the General Hackler Championship and the Coca-Cola Invitational. Byles, who posted a 38th-place finish in last year's Big South Championship, has recorded three-sub 70 rounds of play on the year en route to a stroke average of 75.68 on the season. He has finished in the top-25 in six different events on the year, highlighted by a second-place finish at the Hummingbird Intercollegiate in the Fall season.

After competing in only three tournaments during the 2012 Fall season, Jones has participated in all six of GWU's spring events this season, including being the top-GWU performer at the Davidson College Invitational with his third-place finish. Jones, who has two other top-15 finishes on the season, as he took 12th overall at both the GWU versus HPU Duals and the 2013 Keith Hills Invitational, last competed at the Big South Men's Golf Championship back in 2011 when he posted a 39th-place finish over three-round event.

Making his first Big South Championship appearance will be Kow, as the freshman joined the Runnin' Bulldog squad in January 2013. Kow, who will be playing in only his sixth intercollegiate tournament of his career when he tees-off on Sunday morning at the Championship, posted a seventh-place finish last time out at the 2013 Keith Hills Invitational. Over 13 rounds of play on the season, Kow has registered a strokes average of 76.62 overall.

Overall, the Runnin' Bulldogs have played in four Big South Men's Golf Championship Tournaments since joining the League in the summer of 2008 and have finished in the-top three of the team standings twice.

GWU's best finish team finish came back in 2011 when the Runnin' Bulldogs took second-place overall, while in 2009, competing in its first-ever Big South Championship Tournament, the Runnin' Bulldogs finished in third-place overall.

Last season, Gardner-Webb posted a sixth-place finish with a combined three-round score of 885, +21.

The 2013 Big South Men's Golf Championship begins this weekend with a practice round on Saturday, April 20. The three-day, 54-hole event will be played April 21-23 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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