Sportswomen of Colorado, celebrating their 50th anniversary, will honor golfers Monica Lieving, Morgan Miller and Logan Hale, among others
By Gary Baines – 1/30/2024
Three Colorado golfers, including 2023 women’s World Long Drive Champion Monica Lieving, will be among those honored in March by the Sportswomen of Colorado.
Lieving, a resident of Lakewood who joined Nancy Abiecunas of Fort Collins (2003) as Coloradans who have won the women’s WLD Championship title, earned the Sportswomen’s honor in the professional golf category.
Other golf honorees the Sportswomen of Colorado announced last week were University of Colorado player Morgan Miller, the CGA Women’s Player of the Year for 2023, and Logan Hale, the only Coloradan to compete in the 2023 U.S. Girls’ Junior that Eisenhower Golf Club at the Air Force Academy hosted.
Hale is being recognized in the high school golf category and Miller for college golf.
Lieving, Miller and Hale — along with athletes from other sports — will be honored at the SWOC awards celebration on March 17 at the Hyatt Regency Denver Tech Center. The awards, presented annually, recognize the achievements of female athletes, coaches and contributors to female athletics in Colorado.
Among the speakers on March 17 will be former CWGA board member M’lis Ward, who won a national women’s basketball title at the University of Southern California and now is a longtime captain for United Airlines.
Lieving was a rookie on the WLD circuit when she won the female competition at the WLD Championship. It was her third title in six WLD events in 2023 as she also prevailed at stops in Mesquite, Nev., in March and Hobe Sound, Fla., in April.
(Speaking of World Long Drive, one of the organization’s events once again will be held in Colorado this year as the WLD Rocky Mountains is set for May 31-June 2 at Bigfoot Turf Farm in LaSalle, south of Greeley.)
Miller, a sophomore at CU, is now ranked No. 100 among all female college golfers in the nation. A two-time winner of the girls division at the Colorado Junior Match Play, Miller had a breakthrough year in 2023, performance-wise. Last January, she won the prestigious Jones/Doherty title in Florida. She also advanced to match play at the U.S. Women’s Amateur, finished third in the CGA Women’s Stroke Play, was medalist (with CU teammate Maria Harrouch) in Colorado-based qualifying for the 2024 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball qualifying, and made it to the round of 32 of the 2023 U.S. Four-Ball (with former Buff teammate Malak Bouraeda). Then Miller set a CU program record for stroke average in the fall (70.4) and for rounds in the 60s in a single season (with seven, though the Buffs aren’t even at the halfway point of the schedule). As far as sheer results go, Miller recorded three top-3 finishes in five events, with a second (in Fort Collins) and two thirds (one coming in Highlands Ranch).
As for Hale, the Erie High School senior who has signed with the University of Denver, she won the girls 4A state high school individual title by eight strokes and led Erie to the state team title for the second consecutive year. She earned medalist honors in Colorado-based qualifying for the U.S. Girls’ Junior, where she fell short of advancing to the 64-player match-play portion of the event. Hale later represented the Centennial State at the Girls Junior Americas Cup, finishing 34th. She was subsequently named the female Future Famer of 2023 by the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame.
Last year at the SWOC banquet, golfer Jennifer Kupcho, a Colorado native, was named the Sportswoman of the Year, which was presented to Colorado’s most outstanding athlete based on her 2022 achievements. The 2023 Sportswoman of the Year will be revealed at the March 17 banquet.
For the rest of the 2023 SWOC honorees, CLICK HERE.
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. He was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com