SE GOLFERS DO WELL IN AMATEUR EVENTS

Two members of the Southeast Missouri State University golf team have qualified for the United States Amateur Championship, to be held Aug. 15-22 at Pebble Beach, Calif.

Jason Owen, a senior from Effingham, Ill., and David Fulton, an incoming freshman from St. Catherine's, Ontario in Canada, will be in the prestigious field of 300 golfers from across the United States.

Owen qualified by finishing fourth out of 100 golfers in a qualifying tournament at Westwood Country Club in St. Louis while Fulton finished second out of 126 golfers in a qualifying tournament in Monroe, N.Y.

"To qualify for the U.S. Amateur is an outstanding achievement," said Southeast golf coach Carroll Williams. "Southeast will be one of the few schools, if not the only school, in the nation to have two players in the Amateur."

Two other golfers who have signed to play at Southeast finished third and fourth at the Missouri Junior Amateur conducted recently by the Missouri Golf Association.

Mark Horn of Herculaneum placed third while Woody Hill of Rolla finished fourth. Both will be freshmen at Southeast this year.

Horn and Hill have earned the right to represent Missouri in the Ozark Junior Challenge Cup in Rogers, Ark. They will compete against the top junior golfers from Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Each state is represented by five golfers.

"I think the fact we have two players in the Ozark Junior Challenge Cup in addition to the two players at the U.S. Amateur speaks volumes about the quality of golfers on the 1999-2000 Southeast team," Williams said.

Oermann nets scholarship

Jenny Oermann, a senior standout on the 1999 Southeast softball team, has been awarded one of 107 NCAA postgraduate scholarships.

The $5,000 scholarships are awarded to student-athletes who maintain at least a 3.00 cumulative grade-point average and perform with distinction in varsity competition.

Oermann, the Ohio Valley Conference Female Athlete of the Year and the OVC Softball Player of the Year, had a 3.813 cumulative GPA while becoming only the second athlete in OVC history to be named first-team all-conference four straight years.

The Southeast career record-holder for runs scored and hits, Oermann was a second-team GTE Academic All-American in both 1998 and 1999.

Oermann, who plans to pursue a master's of divinity degree, is the first Southeast athlete at the Division I level to receive a postgraduate scholarship from the NCAA.

Gonzalez earns OVC award

Nicole Gonzalez, a former Southeast volleyball player, has been selected to receive the Vernon Holland Memorial Award for the 1999-2000 school year.

The selection was made by the OVC Faculty Athletics Representatives.

The $2,000 grant is awarded each year by the Nashville Arena and is named after Vernon Holland, a former student-athlete at Tennessee State who worked at the Nashville Arena. He died in 1998.

Gonzalez, who is a graduate assistant in the department of athletics at Southeast, will be formally recognized at the OVC Basketball Media Day later this year in Nashville. She works with student-athlete advising.