GAINESVILLE, Fla. – University of Florida junior Sandra Gal (Leichlingen, Germany) earned multiple Southeastern Conference honors on Thursday, as the league office announced her as Co-Scholar-Athlete of Year and a first-team All-SEC selection.
Gal’s Co-Scholar-Athlete of the Year nod makes her the first player in program history to win the award. Her selection to the all-conference first team also marks the 14th All-SEC honor by a Lady Gator during head coach Jill Briles-Hinton’s nine-year tenure, and represents the eighth-straight year that a UF player has captured all-league accolades.
On the verge of completing a breakout junior season, Gal played her way to the first first-team All-SEC selection for a Lady Gator since Aimee Cho made the cut in 2004. The highest-ranked SEC player, and fifth-rated player overall, on the Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index as of April 22, Gal owns a team-best 72.46 stroke average this season. She has a win at the Lady Gator Invitational and four individual top-five finishes to her credit, and rattled off a streak of 91-consecutive head-to-head wins against SEC players to close out the regular season.
An advertising major with a 3.72 grade-point average, Gal was named to the National Golf Coaches Association All-American Scholar Golf Teams in both 2005 and 2006, while also garnering SEC Academic Honor Roll distinction last season. She shares the Co-Scholar-Athlete of the Year honor with Kentucky’s Beth Felts, a junior pre-physical therapy and business management major with a 4.0 GPA.
The seventh-ranked Lady Gators will receive their NCAA Regional assignment on Monday, April 30, at 4 p.m. EST. The regional draw for UF and all Division I women’s golf teams will be posted on http://www.ncaasports.com at the aforementioned date and time.
Courtesy UF Sports Information.