The No. 10 Ohio State women’s golf team will need sunscreen this week as it exchanges Columbus for the warmth of the Sunshine State and Gainesville, Fla., to participate in the NCAA East regional tournament.

“We have a really good field in Gainesville so we are going to go out there and play our best golf,” freshman Carling Coffing said. “It is going to be competitive regardless of what anyone shoots, so we will have to go out there and put our game faces on.”

The Buckeyes, who are the fourth seed in the tournament, will be competing in the East regional with the likes of No. 1 Duke, No. 6 Pepperdine, No. 8 Washington and No. 11 Florida.

Coach Therese Hession said she is confident because the team has been playing well, but there is still work to do.

“We played the Lady Gator in early March, so we already had four rounds of golf on the golf course, so we are a little more familiar with it,” she said. “I think that local knowledge will help.”

However, there will not be a match play format. Instead the top eight teams from the three regional sections will qualify for nationals, where the top 24 qualifying teams will play in Sunriver Oregon May 17-20.

The Buckeyes are making their 11th consecutive East regional appearance and have qualified for the last nine NCAA national tournaments. They are anxious to make it 10 in a row and hopefully come away with their ultimate goal – a win, junior Jennifer Selfinger said.

“We are ready to go. After last week, we all clicked and played well. Now we are all just anxious to get out and play and hopefully move on to nationals,” Selfinger said. “Our No. 1 goal is to make it to nationals, and with the way we have been playing we could come away with a win this weekend.”

“The Gainesville course is really difficult and it will be a big advantage playing it in the past,” Coffing said. “And the practice round is another opportunity to look at the course and gain confidence in our games. We are just going to go out there with a good attitude and see if we can’t figure anything extra out because every little bit helps.”

Along with practice rounds, the Buckeyes have mapped out the Gainesville course and practiced on things they will most likely see while in Florida, Hession said.

“I have made a little practice sheet that deals with things we will see,” Hession said. “The Bermuda rough will be a little taller than it was in March so we have been practicing chipping. It is a tight golf course so we have worked on punch shots in case we get off the fairway, to keep the ball in play and side hill puts and keeping the ball below the whole.”

Coming off a second place finish at the Lady Buckeye Invitational and winning the Big Ten tournament, the team is playing with a lot of confidence, Coffing said.

“The whole team has a great amount of confidence after winning the Big Ten,” Coffing said. ” We are coming together as a team, and mentally we are just telling each other we can go out and post some good scores.”

For the Buckeyes to have success this weekend and move on to nationals, they will need an entire team effort, Hession said.

“We always seem to be leaning on Kristen (White) and Lindsay (Knowlton),” Hession said. “But Dana (Je) and Jen (Selfinger) are playing really good, and I think that Carling (Coffing) has made some huge strides in her game, and when you get … to the national level at regionals and especially the finals you have to have all your players playing well, so I can’t pick on one or two.”