Through an eight-hour bus ride in a cramped van and a rainy day that delayed the last three holes of the first round, the Augustana men’s golf team opened their spring season by totaling 613 and snatching a second-place finish at the Music City Shootout in Nashville, Tennessee.
After the first day, the Vikings A-team sat in a tie for first place with 259 points, with the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology side-by-side with them in the standings. Meanwhile, the B-team collected 265 points, and the C-team 269 points during the first round.
Among the finishers, First-Years Calvin Short and Camden Flack led the way for Augustana, both tied for eighth overall, while sophomore Liam Shannon tied for 13th and junior Jacob Brokaw tied for 19th. Out of all of the good things the Vikings did in Nashville, Director of Golf Tom Lawrence was sure to point out the team’s perseverance.
“Mentally, we really did a great job of handling adversity,” Lawrence said. “Obviously, when you get outside for the first time in a while, you can hit some bad shots, and our ability to overcome those kept us in the game.”
This second-place finish kicks off the spring season for the Vikings with a bit of momentum that could prove to help the Vikings contend during the second half. A sport like golf is not only physically demanding but also extremely mentally taxing for those competing.
Maintaining consistency is key, and starting off the spring season doing so is good for the individual golfers to get into a rhythm as the season progresses. For Short, that was one of the elements during the Music City Shootout that the team wishes to maintain in the future.
“Consistency was pretty good,” Short said. “None of us really shot any terrible scores, and that’s what can screw us over, and something that we’re trying to improve on in the fall season. We did a really good job of that in Nashville, and I’m hoping that we can continue that into the rest of the spring season, and at conference too.”
Unlike the women’s golf season, the men’s team competes in conference at the end of the spring season instead of the fall, which means that while they may have started out slow in the fall, they have the whole season to improve and create momentum to help them into the conference tournament.
The last time that Augustana won the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW) title for men’s golf was 1999, before these student-athletes were born. However, with the resurgence in underclassmen who are making an impact alongside upperclassmen who have already been performing, senior Noah Ehlenbach has seen the dynamic of the team shift and that the conference could be within reach.
“It’s important to stay in the moment, but obviously our eyes are set on that tournament,” Ehlenbach said. “We know it’s been a while and that [Illinois] Wesleyan is very dominant in our conference. But the team dynamic has completely changed, and we know that we’ve been knocking on the door for some time, and in the next couple years, it’s definitely going to happen. It’s just a matter of when, and stringing three really good days together.”
Next, the Vikings will travel to Terre Haute, Indiana, for the Great Lakes Intercollegiate, a tournament hosted by Rose-Hulman, on March 21-22.
