A total of 163 players are participating in the 31st annual SDGA Junior Championship which will be held Monday and Tuesday at Lakeview Golf Course in Mitchell.

More than 70 teams are competing in the third annual Adult-Junior Championship on Sunday at Lakeview. The Adult-Junior Championship is an alternate-shot tournament in which a junior golfer competes with a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle or older brother or sister.

The junior championship has age divisions - 12-13, 14-15 and 16-18 - for boys and girls. The 11-under divisions play nine holes on Monday, the 12-13 divisions play 18 holes on Monday, while the 14-15 and 16-18 divisions play 18 holes both days.

Three past South Dakota high school state champions are competing in the boys division.

In the 16-18 division, Pierre's Curry Kuehl, the 2008 Class AA winner, is entered. He made it to the finals of the SDGA Match Play Championship last Monday, falling 3 and 2 to Dakota Dunes' Nate Barbee. Kuehl was 11th in last season's junior championship.

Also competing are Rainey Reynolds of Sioux Falls, winner of the past two Class A state tournaments and Yankton's Marc Gubbels, who won the Class AA title in 2007 and tied for third in 2008. Gubbels and Reynolds took second and fifth, respectively, at last season's junior championship at in Huron.

Kuehl, Reynolds and Gubbels, along with Dakota Dunes' Taylor White, are the first group off of No. 1 tee at 7 a.m. MDT on Monday.

Two other golfers from last season's top 10 in the field include Pierre's Miles Schock (seventh place) and Piedmont's Kyle Kopplin (eighth).

Defending champion and reigning SDGA Junior Female Golfer of the Year Taylor Smalley of Pierre is looking to become the ninth two-time winner of this event.

Smalley, the 2008 Class AA high school champ, won last season's SDGA event by one shot with a two-day total of 145 at Broadland Creek.

Two other golfers from last season's top-10 in the field include Sioux Falls' Molly Donohue (sixth place) and Milbank's Rachel Patnoe (10th).