LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. -- In exclusive voting by the head coaches of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC), the league office today announced the 2019 postseason award winners in the sport of women's golf.
Southwestern University's Leilani McDaniel was named the Golfer of the Year, while Trinity University's Raquel Hill was chosen as the Freshman of the Year. Southwestern head coach Greg Sigler earned Coach of the Year honors for the second consecutive year.
McDaniel, a junior from Austin, Texas, posted an 80.06 scoring average through 18 rounds during the 2018-19 campaign which included a tournament win at the Abilene Intercollegiate where she posted a 36-hole score of 151 (78-73) on the par-71 6,009-yard Diamondback Course. McDaniel also posted runner-up finishes at three events, including the 2019 SCAC Championship where she finished two shots behind teammate Emily Campbell with a two-day total of 154 after back-to-back rounds of 77. Over the weekend, McDaniel made par an event-high 25 times, leading Par 3 scoring with a 3.13 average and finished second in Par 4 scoring at 4.40. The second-place finish was the second straight for the junior at the conference championship as she lost in a playoff in 2018.
A two-time SCAC Player-of-the-Week during the regular season, McDaniel earned First Team All-SCAC honors for the second consecutive year in addition to being a WGCA All-American Scholar nominee and earning the league's inaugural Elite 19 award for women's golf.
McDaniel's selection as Golfer of the Year marks the eighth time a Southwestern women's golfer has taken home the league's top honor - the most of any program in conference history - but the first since Lauren Boone in 2015.
Hill, a freshman from Canyon Springs, Texas, posted three top 10 finishes during the 2018-19 season, including a tie atop the leaderboard at the Schreiner University Spring Shootout where she paced the Trinity women by firing a closing round 3-over-par 75 to post a two-round score of 151. Hill aso posted an eighth place finish at the TLU John Bohmann Memorial and ended the season with a fifth place finish at the SCAC Championship which earned her a spot on the All-SCAC First Team - making her the first freshman to earn First Team honors since Kaycee Bankert of Schreiner in 2016.
Hill is the fourth Trinity women's golfer to earn SCAC Freshman of the Year honors and the first since the Tiger program produced back-to-back-to-back honorees in 2015 (Shelby DeVore), 2014 (Hanna Niner) and 2013 (Brigette Lee).
Sigler led the Pirates to the program's second consecutive SCAC title and record eighth overall with a convincing 46-shot victory at the 2019 SCAC Championship. Unlike last year when Southwestern had to fight off Trinty in a two-hole team playoff, the Pirates were never seriously threatened at this year's championship. After taking a 22-shot lead following an opening round 315, Southwestern was 24 shots clear of the field on the final day to finish at 319 for the round. The Pirates' two-day total of 634 established a new SCAC record, besting the 639 Rhodes' shot at the 2001 championships, and it was six shots better than the mark posted in any of the three previous conference tournaments played at Vaaler Creek.
The Coach of the Year honor is the second consecutive for Sigler and the eighth overall for a Pirate women's golf coach.
