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2018 Northeast Conference Women's Golf Preseason Coaches Poll             1. Fairleigh Dickinson (4)             2. Sacred Heart (1)             3. Central Connecticut (1)             4. (tie) LIU Brooklyn                  Wagner (1)             6. Saint Francis U             7. St. Francis Brooklyn             First place votes in parentheses

 
Somerset, NJ -- After finishing as the runner-up a year ago at the 2017 NEC Women’s Golf Championship, the league’s head coaches have installed Fairleigh Dickson as the preseason favorite this spring. 
 
The Knights received four first place votes and were followed in the poll by defending champion Sacred Heart, which set a new 54-hole record at the NEC Tournament last spring. CCSU was picked third with LIU Brooklyn and Wagner tying for fourth place. The Pioneers, Blue Devils and Seahawks all received a single first place vote.
 
Saint Francis U was chosen sixth and St. Francis Brooklyn rounded out the seven-team poll.
 
Fairleigh Dickinson has been the NEC’s dominant program over the last decade with six conference titles in that span, most recently winning back-to-back crowns in 2015 and 2016.
 
Rob Warren enters his tenth season at the helm of the Knights, and will bring back two experienced veterans that have collected their share of individual accolades. Returning All-NEC first teamer Mailen Domecq Chantry (Mar del Plata, Argentina/EEM Nº13 (Nova Southeastern)) will look to build off her fifth place finish at the NEC Championship last spring. The senior finished seven strokes back with a 225 (+9). Gabriela Santini (San Juan, Puerto Rico/San Jose), who is back for her final collegiate season, has been one of the top golfers in the NEC over her first three years.  The Puerto Rico native won the NEC individual title in 2015 en-route to NEC Rookie of the Year honors. She’s also a three-time All-Conference honoree who earned NEC Golfer of the Month recognition in the fall after posting a conference-best average of 74.7 in the month of October. 
 
Matthew McGreevy, the recipient of back-to-back NEC Coach of the Year honors, will be seeking a second consecutive league title with a Sacred Heart that features two NEC all-stars. Junior Chelsea Sedlar (Merrimack, NH/Bishop Guertin) was the 2016 NEC individual champion and lost a playoff to former teammate Ellen Nighbor at last year’s championship. Twice named to the All-NEC first team, she claimed an NEC Golfer of the Month honor this past fall after she won the Hartford Hawks Invitational in September. Abigail Hood (Gloucester, MA/Rockport) will be donning the SHU polo for one final year, and hopes to improve on last year’s fourth place finish at the NEC meet. She has twice earned All-NEC second team distinction.
 
Two other All-NEC honorees return this season in Wagner junior Pascalle Tego (Mexico City, Mexico/Colegio Monteverde) and LIU Brooklyn sophomore Carolina Ronchel (Huelva, Spain/Huelva). Tego has collected All-Conference awards in each of her first two seasons, including a first team accolade last spring. Ronchel returns after an impressive freshman campaign that earned her a second team All-Conference appearance. 
 
The 2018 NEC Women’s Golf Championship will be back in Daytona Beach at LPGA International from April 20-22. 
 
About The Northeast Conference
Now in its 37th year, the Northeast Conference is an NCAA Division I collegiate athletic association consisting of 10 institutions of higher learning located throughout six states. Media coverage of the NEC extends to four of the largest markets in the United States - New York (#1), Pittsburgh (#23), Baltimore (#27), and Hartford/New Haven (#30).  Founded in 1981 as the basketball-only ECAC Metro Conference, the NEC has grown to sponsor 22 championship sports for men and women and now enjoys automatic access to 14 different NCAA Championships. NEC member institutions include Bryant, Central Connecticut, Fairleigh Dickinson, LIU Brooklyn, Mount St. Mary’s, Robert Morris, Sacred Heart, St. Francis Brooklyn, Saint Francis U and Wagner. For more information on the NEC, visit the league’s official website (www.northeastconference.org) and digital network (www.necfrontrow.com), or follow the league on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat, all @NECsports.