MOORPARK, Calif. (Mar. 16, 2022) – Sophomore Caroline Valle (Las Vegas, Nev. / Sierra Vista) of the Whittier College women's golf team played to a second place finish at this week's Regals Invitational, contested over Monday and Tuesday afternoon at the Par 72 Moorpark Country Club.

Valle, who shot a +15 for the two-day tournament, finished just three strokes off the tournament champion from Whitworth University, and save her best round of golf for Tuesday. The sophomore shot +5 for the day, making her one of the top scoring players of the day. She led Whittier to a fourth-place overall finish on the team leaderboard and still positioned herself well after the first day as one of six players who shot an opening round 10-over. She went on to improve her score by five strokes between Monday and Tuesday with her round-to-round improvement coming in sixth among participating golfers.

Whittier would shoot a collective +98 for the tournament as one of the tournament's most consistent teams from day to day. The Poets' total score positioned them third among SCIAC teams, and like Valle, freshman Leanne Telle had quite a bit to do with it, shooting a +21 to round out the tournament's top-10 finishers. Senior Natalie Gonzalez (Norwalk, Calif. / Santa Fe), junior Aleena Mendoza (Victorville, Calif. / Cobalt Institute of Math and Science) and freshman Jacqueline Torres rounded out the Poets' scorers for the tournament, with Gonzalez posting the strongest score of the three with a +30 after shooting an 12th-place +11 during the opening round.

Head Coach Doo Kang and the Poets will now have roughly three weeks to prepare for SCIAC No. 2, which will be co-hosted by the Poets and Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens between Apr. 9 and 10.

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