Instead of hunting for eggs this Easter, the men’s golf team will be hunting for better scores.
The men’s golf team will try to put together three good rounds instead of just one this weekend at the 2003 FirstEnergy Collegiate in Ravenna, Ohio.
The tournament will take place on Saturday and Easter Sunday at Windmill Lakes Golf Course, a par-70 6,936-yard track. The tournament is hosted on a bi-annual basis by Kent State and Akron. The Golden Flashes won the tournament by 10 strokes when it was last played at Windmill Lakes two years ago.
The Falcons are coming off a sixth place finish at the Bullock Collegiate Classic on the campus of Wright State University last weekend. Bowling Green was tied for second after one round, but faltered in the second and third rounds to end up with a total score of 911. The Falcons were led individually in the tournament by Chris Leake. He tied for fifth place overall individually with a score of 221. Leake fired a 75 in the first round, a 71 in the second round and another 75 to wrap up his tournament in the third round. The score of 221 was a personal best for Leake. The Falcons’ best player for much of the year, Craig Pickerel, did not perform up to his usual standards at the tournament. Pickerel tied for 54th place with a score of 237.
Coach Garry Winger felt Pickerel’s performance was a key to the Falcons’ disappointing showing.
“It’s tough to have a good showing when your best player doesn’t play well,” Winger said.
Andy Miller tied for 21st place for the Falcons in the tournament with a score of 221. Miller fired a 75 in the first round and shot back to back 76’s in the second and third rounds.
Also placing for the Falcons was Bud Ziglar, who tied for 38th place with a score of 232, and Adam Cordes who tied for 56th place with a score of 238.
The Falcons will be competing against 14 other schools and six individuals this weekend in Ravenna. It is one of the strongest fields the Falcons will compete in all season.
“It’s going to be another great field like the Marshall Invitational,” Winger said. “We’re going to have to play better or else the results will be similar to what happened in Marshall.” The Falcons finished in 16th place out of 16 teams at the Marshall Invitational two weekends ago.
The 15-team field includes all 10 members of the Mid- American Conference. Buffalo, Central Michigan and Western Michigan are not members of the MAC in golf. Other schools competing will be Eastern Kentucky, Manitoba University, Wright State, Penn State and Xavier.
A few teams in the field have won tournament titles this season. The host team, Kent State, has won the Big Red Classic, which the Falcons competed in, and finished second in the El Diablo Intercollegiate. Eastern Kentucky has won two tournament titles this season while Wright State won the Xavier tournament in the fall.
Toledo won the tournament last year, which was played at the famous Firestone Country Club in Akron.
Next weekend, the Falcons will head to State College, Penn., for the Penn State Invitational which will take place Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The weekend after that, the Falcons will end their regular season at the MAC Championships in DeKalb, Ill., on the campus of Northern Illinois University.
