LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. -- In exclusive voting by the head coaches of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC), the league office today announced the 2018 postseason award winners in the sport of women's golf.
Centenary College's Jessica Varner was named the Golfer of the Year for the second consecutive year, while Texas Lutheran University's Kristen Cox as chosen as the Freshman of the Year. Southwestern University head coach Greg Sigler earned Coach of the Year honors.
Varner, a junior from Baton Rouge, La., was a four-time SCAC Player of the Week selection during the regular season and finished the season as the highest-ranked player in the conference (27th in the nation according to GolfStat). Varner posted the lowest adjusted scoring average in the conference (76.97) and posted five individual wins in the 10 events she competed in this season. After earning medalist honors at the 2017 SCAC Championships, Varner posted a third-place finish at this year's event.
Varner is the first woman to win back-to-back SCAC Golfer of the Year honors since Southwestern's Marisa Mauldin won the award three straigtht seasons from 2007-2009. She is just the fifth woman in league history to win the award multiple times.
Cox, a freshman from Utopia, Texas, finished tied for 10th at the SCAC Championships to earn Second Team All-SCAC honors. She cut 10 shots off her first-day performance and rallied to post a second-day score of 80 for a two-day total of 170. For the season, Cox had an adjusted scoring average of 85.52 and, according to GolfStat, was the highest ranked first-year player in the conference at 95th in the West Region.
Cox is first TLU women's golfer in program history to earn SCAC Freshman of the Year honors.
Sigler led the 12th-ranked Pirates to the 2018 SCAC team title which was contested at Panther Trail at The Golf Trails of The Woodlands. Southwestern had to hold off a fierce Trinity second-round rally and came out on top in one of the closest races in SCAC championship history, defeating the Tigers in a two-hole playoff. The team playoff was the first in the 20+ history of SCAC tournament golf. The win represented Southwestern's seventh all-time for the women's golf program and the first since 2013.
For the season, Southwestern won five of the 10 events it entered and finished in the top three in all but one - the Jekyll Island Collegiate where the Pirates finished 10th out of 29 teams in a field where almost half of the teams were ranked in the top 25.
The award for Sigler is his first on the women's side and the first for a Southwestern women's golf coach since Dan Ruyle won the award following the 2013 season.
