GREENEVILLE, Tenn. --- The Tusculum University women's golf team will be competing at the 2026 South Atlantic Conference Championship next week in Greenville, South Carolina. The three-day championship will be contested at The Preserve at Verdae.
It will be a new format this year to determine the league champion. The first part of the tournament will be a 54-hole stroke play format which will be played on Sunday (36 holes) and Monday (18 holes). The top-four teams from stroke play will advance to a medal match play format to determine the winner, who will earn the conference's automatic berth to next month's NCAA Division II Tournament.
Leading the charge for the Pioneers is senior Reagan Padilla (Gallatin, Tenn.). She enters this year's championship with a 76.00 stroke average which includes a pair of top-five performances. Padilla has enjoyed success at the SAC Championship during her career, where she has earned All-Tournament honors the last two years. She finished fourth at last year's SAC Championship, following a third-place showing in 2024.
Padilla's career stroke average of 76.30 is the second-lowest in program history while her 93 career rounds played are the most by a Pioneer. She has finished in the top-20 on 24 occasions including 19 times in the top-10 and 13 times in the top-five.
Greeneville sophomore Maylei Hildenbrand will be competing in her second SAC Championship. Hildenbrand finished second on the team with her 78.40 stroke average, which includes three top-20 finishes including an eighth-place showing at the Agnes McAmis Memorial.
Hildenbrand finished 39th at the last year's Conference Championship and enters this year's event with a 78.03 scoring average, which ranks seventh-best in the TU record book.
Junior Delfin Filiz (Istanbul, Turkey) is third on the team with her 79.15 stroke average while leading the Pioneers with her four top-20 finishes including a season-best 10th place outing at the McAmis Memorial. Her last eight rounds have all been in the 70s and is averaging 76.63 per round for her last three tournaments.
Filiz has a career 80.62 stroke average which is listed 12th in program history. She finished 30th at last year's SAC Championship.
Senior Annabelle Mozingo (Jacksonville, Fla.) has finished in the top-10 on two occasions including one top-five performance. She has a 79.20 stroke average this season with her best tournament showing coming at the King Invitational where she finished third with a 36-hole total of 145 including a final round 71. She also placed eighth at the McAmis Memorial and 22nd at the St. Simons Intercollegiate.
Mozingo enters this week's championship with an 80.93 career stroke average (14th in TU history) in her 40 competitive rounds. Her 54-hole score of 236 at St. Simons is a career-best.
Freshman Lidya Atalay (Istanbul, Turkey) will be making her SAC Championship debut next week. She has played in three events this season where she has an 83.6 scoring average and finished 20th at the McAmis Memorial.
Freshman McKenna Williams (Waynesville, N.C.) will be playing as the alternate for the Pioneers this week. Williams has played in seven tournaments this year and owns an 85.1 stroke average including 80.2 per round in her last two events.
The Pioneers won the first two SAC Women's Golf Championships held by the league in 2000 and 2001. Tusculum finished runner-up at the 2013 and 2017 league championships.
