Desert Wraps Up Share of Conference Title

College of the Desert wrapped up at least a share of the Orange Empire Conference title this week in the final conference event before heading into next week's conference championship.

The Roadrunners, with 80 conference wins, are 16 wins ahead of second-place Irvine Valley (64 wins) with 16 points hanging in the balance at the conference championship.  As long as the Roadrunners don't finish last, they will win the conference title outright.  In fact, unless there is a huge shake-up in the team finish during the conference championship, the first four teams shouldn't change.  And the conference will be sending four teams to advance to the Southern California regional championship on November 9-10.

Fullerton (57 wins) is in third place and Palomar (48 wins) is in fourth place while Mt. San Antonio (39) and Saddleback (38) are giving chase but would need Palomar to completely collapse in order to have a shot at a playoff spot.

This week's match was played at Woods Valley, which will also be the site of the conference championship being played on November 3 and 5.  Desert, which won all 10 conference events this season, posted a team score of 311 but Irvine Valley was close behind at 313 as the Lasers have started to peak over the past two weeks.  Fullerton (326) finished third, Palomar (344) was fourth, and Mt. San Antonio (354) was fifth.

Teammates Leleaga Meredith and Cindy Dang of Irvine Valley shared medalist honors with matching 2-over-par 74's.   It was the third consecutive match that Meredith has shared medalist honors and the second consecutive match that Dang has equalled the low individual score, giving the Lasers a powerful 1-2 punch for their team score.  Fumika Matsumoto and Samantha Stewart (pictured) of Desert were a stroke back at 75, along with Saddleback's Rina Tomihari.

All five of these ladies are averaging under 80 strokes per round heading into the conference championship with individual conference honors on the line.  Matsumoto leads the conference by 16 strokes, averaging 74.4 strokes with Stewart averaging 76.4 strokes.