By Jeff Barnes
The back-to-back Big Ten Champion Spartans return three of five starters from last year’s team that placed in the top three in nine of 11 events and reached a No. 10 ranking in the country.
Coming back are two first team All-Big Ten players in juniors Ally Geer (Brighton) and Paz Marfa Sans (Spain). Geer recorded the second-lowest season average in school history last season (71.61), while Marfa Sans had the third best average (72.29). This summer Geer also qualified for the U.S. Women’s Amateur and played on her second consecutive sponsor’s exemption into the Meijer LPGA Classic, plus a sponsor’s invite to the LPGA’s Symetra Tour contest in Battle Creek.
Ally Geer
Jacqueline Setas (Lansing Catholic) returns from cancer recovery to repeat her senior season, an incredible comeback story (story on pages 2-4).
Head coach Stacy Slobodnik-Stoll enters her 22nd season guiding the Spartans and is coming off her second straight and fifth overall Big Ten Coach of the Year honor last season.
MSU adds four incoming players to its roster this upcoming season, including: Elizabeth Harding (South Lyon); Haylin Harris (Carmel, Indiana); Taby Robinson (Dublin, Ohio); and Valery Plata (Floridablanca, Colombia). Plata got all the way to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship in late July. Harris made it to the round of 16 at the U.S. Girl’s Junior Championship in 2017. Both Harding and Robinson will be joining their sisters (Priscilla and Caroline Harding; Sybil Robinson) on the Spartan squad.
MSU will open the 2018-19 season with the 35th annual Mary Fossum Invitational, Sept. 15-16 at Forest Akers West in East Lansing. At season’s end the Spartans will also host the NCAA Regionals at Forest Akers West in May 2019.
