MALIBU, California " The Pepperdine women's golf team earned a spot in its 19th consecutive NCAA Regional today and the Waves will get to stay in the West and head to a familiar course in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Pepperdine is the #9 seed at the upcoming regional, which will be contested at the University of New Mexico Championship Golf Course from May 8-10.

The Waves will be looking to finish among the top six teams out of the 18 schools competing there. In order of seeding, they are: Stanford, USC, Duke, Miami (Fla.), Oklahoma State, North Carolina State, California, Illinois, Pepperdine, Washington, SMU, Campbell, Denver, New Mexico State, Cal Poly, Sacramento State, Houston Baptist and Texas Southern.

The Waves annually play this course in the fall at New Mexico's Branch Law Firm/Dick McGuire Invitational, including each of the last five years. Pepperdine won on the course as recently as 2013. This is the first time that the Waves have been sent there for a regional.

"I'm very happy that we're going to a course where we've competed well and we've even won the tournament there a few times," Pepperdine Coach Laurie Gibbs said. "We're playing in altitude again, which we just did at BYU, so that's to our advantage. We know how to handle that, and we know the course. We're excited to get there and to get to nationals. A good thing is that we're done with finals so we can just focus on golf. Putting and our short game will be a big focus, and we just need to keep doing what we've been doing."

At each of the four regionals, the top six teams and the top three individuals from non-qualifying teams will advance to the NCAA Championships (May 19-24 at Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove, Illinois).

Pepperdine is looking to qualify for the NCAA Championships for the 12th time in school history, and for the first time since 2012. The Waves have finished in the top 10 at nationals eight times, including a program-best second-place result in 2003.

The Waves, who placed second at last week's West Coast Conference Championships, put three golfers on the All-WCC first team -- sophomore Hira Naveed (Perth, Australia), junior Tatiana Wijaya (Jakarta, Indonesia) and junior Katherine Zhu (Vancouver, B.C.) " while Momoka Kobori (Rangiora, New Zealand) was named WCC Freshman of the Year.

The other three regionals will be held at the University of Georgia Golf Course in Athens, Georgia; the OSU Golf Club-Scarlet Course in Columbus, Ohio; and the Rawls Course in Lubbock, Texas. There are a total of 72 teams and 24 individuals that were selected for regional play.