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Nirapathpongporn to be Honored by WGCA
CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. – Duke University alumna Virada Nirapathpongporn will be inducted into the Women’s Golf Coaches Association (WGCA) Players Hall of Fame Sunday, Dec. 11, 2016 at Planet Hollywood Resort in Las Vegas, Nev., which was announced Monday by the WGCA. Nirapathpongporn will be inducted along with Lorena Ochoa of Arizona and Maria Hernandez of Purdue. The trio will become the 67th, 68th and 69th members of the WGCA Players Hall of Fame.
Nirapathpongporn, who hails from Bangkok, Thailand, concluded her Blue Devil career as the first student-athlete to school history to earn WGCA First Team All-America honors each of her four years. She tallied a then school-record 27 top-10 tournament finishes and broke school scoring records for both 18 holes (65-tie) and 72 holes (279). In 2002, she became the program’s second-ever individual national champion with a then NCAA-record four-round score of 279 and helped guide the Blue Devils to the team national title. Nirapathpongporn won the 2003 U.S. Women’s Amateur and she was also the winner of the Honda Award for golf in 2002 as the National Player of the Year.
In 2004, Nirapathpongporn was honored as the Nancy Lopez Award recipient, awarded the world’s top amateur, and began her professional career later that year.
The year of 2016 has been a busy year for Nirapathpongporn as she was inducted into the Duke Hall of Fame in September along with her Blue Devil head coach Dan Brooks.
The Women’s Golf Coaches Association, founded in 1983, is a non-profit organization representing women’s collegiate golf coaches. The WGCA was formed to encourage the playing of college golf for women in correlation with a general objective of education and in accordance with the highest tradition of intercollegiate competition. Today, the WGCA represents nearly 600 coaches throughout the U.S. and is dedicated to educating, promoting and recognizing both its members and the student-athletes they represent.
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