Golf team up to par for spring season

With the return of Tiger Woods to the PGA Tour, golf has once again returned to prominence in the sporting world on such syndicated sports' stations such as ESPN. Far from the spotlights of the cameras capturing the return of golf's greatest ever professional, the Assumption College golf team has begun to prepare for the spring portion of their schedule for the 2008-2009 season. The Hounds will open the new spring season on April 5 at the Dowling College Invitational in Riverhead, NY according to assumptiongreyhounds.com.After the fall season, Assumption finds itself in seventh place in the standings, while the top ten teams make the regional tournament from the Northeast. While not winning any tournaments, the Assumption team came in third in the Assumption College Shootout held on September 16, and fourth in the NE-10 Golf Championship on September 29 to help position itself in a spot to continue on to the postseason and the NCAA tournament. With a solid core group of players led by senior co-captains Tyler Johnson, Robert Younker and James Farrea, the team looks to improve upon the fall season in order to experience a successful spring season.

As with any team, the goals set before the season will play a large role in the minds of the players. "Our goal since day one has been to reach the national championship," said James Farrea, a marketing major from Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Tyler Johnson, a marketing major from Holden, MA, added, "We want to play well enough to make the NCAA's in West Virginia."

With such lofty goals set before the season, the golf team has set its aspirations high and the team looks to capitalize on their potential to achieve them. In order to reach these goals, improvements will have to be made on the play of the squad from the fall season.

"We must improve on our consistency of play," said Robert Younker, a Waltham, MA native and accounting major. "It seems like we all play good one day, and bad the other."

Farrea added, "We seem to lose focus and struggle in closing out a round and those strokes seem to always hold us back at the end of a tournament."

Consistency seems to be the one factor the Hounds need to work on in the spring season in order to head to the regional tournament. "As a team, we just need to be more consistent," said Johnson. "We need to be able to play well in all the tournaments this spring."

Although the team was not as successful as they hoped in the fall, they are still looking forward to a spring season full of promise. "The team did not play as well as we should have during the fall, so the team is very eager to play better in the spring and not lose our chance to make regionals," said Younker. "The team's outlook is still very positive."

Farrea added, "The team is as deep as it has been since I've been here which gives us a lot of options in closing out the season; I think the fact that we have three seniors in the lineup should help with the experience that we all have had." With a positive group of players, the Hounds seem ready to handle any challenges that should come their way this season and are excited about the chance to play well and increase their rank in the Northeast Region.

Playing well should not be a problem for the golfers who see their current position as one that will be improved upon. "We had strong showings in the NE-10 and ECAC tournaments that have us in the position we're currently in," Farrea noted. "We're positioned in the middle of the pack in super regional rankings, which is where we need to be entering into the spring season."

In order to remain competitive in the standings, the team will need a collective effort of its members in the four upcoming tournaments this season before the regional finals. The Greyhounds will get started in the Dowling College Invitational on April 5, with the Lou Flumere Invitational, UMASS Lowell Riverhawk Invitational and American International College Invitational to follow. The expectations of success and hard work will follow them throughout the tournaments.

But what can the Assumption College community expect from the team this season? The senior co-captains have answers for that. "The Assumption College community can expect the golf team to try our very best to make it back to the regional tournament," said Younker. "Making the tournament two out of the past three years will help to promote Assumption College as an up and coming golf threat to the Northeast region."

Adding to that, Farrea said, "They can expect our team to work hard and continue to do whatever it takes to be successful in the division." To sum it up, Johnson explained, "Assumption should expect another highly competitive season and hopefully a trip to the highly coveted NCAA tournament."

Assumption looks forward to a new spring golf season and the success of the team in its quest for a berth in the NCAA tournament.