MUSCLE SHOALS, Ala. – Eastern Kentucky will begin its quest for the program’s second Ohio Valley Conference women's golf championship on Monday. The three-round, three-day event will be contested at The Shoals Golf Course, in Muscle Shoals, Ala. The Shoals features two courses, the OVC Championships will be played on The Fighting Joe.

Eight teams will compete for the title. Jacksonville State, the host for this year’s title chase, has won each of the last three championships. The OVC began sponsoring women’s golf in 1994. The Colonels won the title in 1996.

In 11 events this season, EKU has placed in the top-10 eight times and in the top-five, five times. Eastern’s best finishes were at the 2007 Lady Indian Classic in October and the NewWave Communications Racer Classic in March. The Colonels placed second at both events.

Eastern Kentucky’s best three-round total of the season came at the Chris Banister Gamecock Classic hosted by Jacksonville State in September. EKU totaled a 932 and finished third. Only four of the 11 events the Colonels have played have been three rounds.

Eastern has been led this season by a pair of seniors, Kelli Warner and Melissa Rosloniec. Warner has a team-high seven top-20 finishes, four of those are top-10 performances. She enters the OVC Championships with a team-low 79.2 stroke average in 24 rounds of action. Warner is one of only three OVC players to hit a hole-in-one this season. The Liberty, Ky., native hit her ace at the NewWave Communications Racer Classic.

Warner placed first in the one-round F&M Bank APSU Intercollegiate and earned a second place finish at the Lady Indian Classic.

Four of Rosloniec’s five top-20 finishes have been top-10 performances as well. She has a 79.9 stroke average in 24 rounds. The Cordova, Tenn., native has tied for seventh three times this season.

The east championship course at The Shoals is named after General Joseph "Fighting Joe" Wheeler - the only Confederate General to attain the same rank later in the United States Army. General Wheeler's intense desire to show that Southerners could be counted on as citizens of the U.S. prompted him to volunteer, at age 62, for service in the Spanish-American War.