The Augustana men’s golf team started their season by placing third as a team in the Highland Championship. The two-day championship hosted in Rock Island on the Vikings’ home course was held from Sept. 1 to Sept. 2. After the final hole, the Vikings were only behind Millikin University and North Central College.
Some of the Vikings’ placements included a third-place finish for sophomore Kevin Cortez, an eighth-place finish for senior Sam Evenson and a 27th place finish for junior Drake Stoudt.
“My first day was rough, but I returned with a good second day,” Stoudt said. “I think I need to go in with a better mindset because most of our tournaments are two day tournaments, so you just gotta keep calm through both days.”
The team finished last season by placing third in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW) championships. Still, director of golf Tom Lawrence expected the team to improve constantly and to come into the season even better.
“Every year, my expectation is that we’re better than the year before,” Lawrence said. “The guys work hard over the summertime, and it shows. You got some tremendous improvement out of many guys, and it’s extremely competitive, and that’s awesome because that just lifts everybody.”
Despite placing third out of 21 teams who participated in the championship, sophomore Alexandre Thery knew the team had the potential to win since they play at the course regularly. Thery believes the team can get revenge on Millikin and North Central when the time comes to compete in the CCIW championships during the spring season.
“Third place is pretty good, but since we are playing at home, we should expect to win the tournament because we know the course, where to miss, and where not to miss,” Thery said. “The two teams in front of us are in our conference. So obviously, we want to beat them at conference in May.”
Since it was the team’s first championship or invitational, it could be used as a benchmark to see where the players are at. Coming off of a long offseason, junior Noah Ehlenbach used the offseason not just to try and get better but also to relax and take some pressure off of himself. That approach helped him place in the top 20 during the Highland Championship.
“In previous seasons, I put a lot of expectations on the golf that I play in both the spring and summer,” Ehlenbach said. “I didn’t quite have the spring that I wanted last year, so I took part of the summer to kind of step back, try and find the part of the game that I really enjoyed again.”
The team’s next invitational is the Midwest Region Classic, which takes place from Friday, Sept. 20 to Saturday, Sept. 21, in Kansasville, Wisconsin. Being more of an individual sport, everyone on the team has their own goals. However, one goal Lawrence has for his team is to win. He knows that if they play their best, they can win the classic.
“I’d love to win,” Lawrence said. “We’re going in with the expectation that if we play our best, we can. The fun thing is that our top 10 guys are very close in score. With the B team that we take, their goal is going to be to beat our A team. So everybody’s there, we’re all going to have goals, and obviously, one of ours is to come out with a win.”