MINNEAPOLIS (8/9/02) -- Augsburg College has named Kristi Dostal as the school's new women's golf head coach, women's athletic director Marilyn Florian announced on Friday.

For four years, Dostal has served as assistant golf pro at Pheasant Acres Golf Club in Rogers, Minn. Pheasant Acres has 420 members and processes 54,000 rounds of golf per season. At Pheasant Acres, Dostal has coordinated the pro shop, organized club tournaments, coached six junior clinics and instructed a weekly junior league with more than 90 high school- and college-age golfers, in addition to her regular teaching duties as a golf pro. She is currently an apprentice in the Professional Golfers Association of America's Golf Professional Training Program.

As a collegiate golfer at Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (1994-98), Dostal was named Midwest Classic Conference Player of the Year three times, winning the conference title twice, earning all-conference honors all four years and qualifying for the NAIA national meet all four years. Mount Mercy won the Midwest Classic title three of her four seasons. A team captain for three years, she earned numerous athletic and academic awards and received scholarships for academic and leadership success.

Dostal replaces Sheryl Maize, who coached at Augsburg for two seasons before taking the head coaching position at the University of Memphis (Tenn.), an NCAA Division I program. In her two years at Augsburg, Maize guided the Auggies to dramatic improvement in scoring and overall participation numbers, with six golfers finishing the season in 2002. The Auggies trimmed their team scoring average by nearly 130 strokes per round in the two seasons of Maize's coaching.

Two Augsburg golfers had sub-115 stroke averages this season, and Auggie Janell Johnson (Jr., St. Paul, Minn./Highland Park HS) earned Most Improved Golfer honors from coaches in the Minnesota Women's Collegiate Golf Association this spring, slicing her overall stroke average nearly 30 strokes from the beginning of the 2000-01 season to the end of this season.