The men’s golf team will be traveling farther south than most students over spring break, venturing all the way to Puerto Rico, where they will enjoy a week filled with bonding, relaxation, and-of course-competition.
“Now that the tournament is almost here, our guys are really itching to get started,” said coach Garry Winger. “We are really excited to get back on grass and see if our practice during the winter has paid off.”
The Falcons will fly down to Humacao, located on the island’s east coast, Friday and have two days of practice before teeing-it-up for real Monday in the Palmas Del Mar Intercollegiate. The tournament is hosted by St. John’s (N.Y.) University and will feature a 15-team field that includes Mid-American Conference adversary Ohio, as well as several smaller Division I and Division II schools, including Rollins College (Fla.), which has become a power in Division II golf.
“The field overall is not as strong as some that we have seen in the past couple of years here,” Winger said. “But we aren’t coming into this week worried about competing with any one team. We are just focused on improving our own games. If we do that, then everything else should fall into place.”
The tournament will consist of 54 holes of stroke play and will be held over three days. Rather than return home on Wednesday, the Falcons will remain in Puerto Rico for an additional two days to enjoy the beautiful Caribbean weather and bond together as a team.
“Going down there is a wonderful experience for our players,” Winger said. “The guys stay together in the same house all week, which really leads to a great bonding experience.”
After a solid fall semester that saw the Falcons record two victories, Winger said that he is looking for more consistency out of his group in the spring.
“We need more tournaments with four to five guys contributing,” Winger said. “In the fall we had a few too many instances where we would only get solid contributions out of two or three players, which can’t happen if we want to be in the running most weeks.”
The Falcons enter the spring with a cumulative team scoring average of 292.71, more than three strokes better than the school record — set during 2008 — of 296.00. However, Winger and his team prefer to focus on the refreshingly simple practice of just getting a little bit better each day.
“We don’t spend too much time coming up with set-in-stone goals for ourselves,” Winger said. “Each individual knows what they need to do to get better, and if everyone takes responsibility for their own game, then we should be where we want as a team most of the time.”
