The process of becoming an official club sport on campus can mean a long wait for teams wanting to apply, and acceptance as a club sport is not always guaranteed. But after its approval process was completed prior to the 2009 fall season, the club golf team is now reaping the benefits of its second semester with recognition as a club team through Campus
Recreation.
According to Chris Herndon, a junior in civil engineering and the club president, he and his teammates have had some stress and financial burden taken off their hands this season.
“Being officially recognized has been awesome,” Herndon said. “It allows us to receive more funding to pay for tournaments and expenses that come along with playing golf.”
In addition to receiving annual club funding, the team is pairing with
Cueva De Lobos, a local eatery, to host a fundraiser next week. Because of the positive return from the restaurant in previous fundraisers, the team chose to return to the Avent Ferry hot-spot.
Brian Cox, a junior in Spanish language and literature, has been intensely promoting the event through Facebook and info flyers. He said additional contributions are necessary and help with costs.
“From Campus Rec, we only get enough money to pay for one tournament,” Cox said. “Last year, the money we made from Lobos paid for nearly an entire additional tournament.”
Fundraising is an essential component of many club sports. The golf team has to pay tournament entry fees, cart fees and travel fees up front out and out of pocket. At the end of the season, the group gets reimbursed from Campus Rec and fundraising.
“We are going to continue to go out into the community and recruit the help of other businesses,” Cox said. “Lobos has been great in helping us out so far.”
As a member of the National Collegiate Club Golf Association, the team competes within the Southeast Conference in the North and South Carolina West Division. The conference includes local rivals Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill, as well as Wake Forest, Elon and five other teams.
In the fall, the team enjoyed substantial success, finishing fourth in the conference standings. The biggest disappointment of the year was the six shot total that forced the team to miss the qualifying cut for nationals.
“This semester, our team is looking strong again and we are ready to step it up and make it to nationals,” Cox said. “Our spring schedule is looking tough.”
The team consists of 14 members, but only eight can qualify for each tournament. Qualifying rounds are held during practice during the week prior to competition.
This spring, the team will participate in tournaments against competitive teams such as UNC-Wilmington and Coastal Carolina. While some of last year’s players graduated or did not return, the newcomers are already making an impact on the team.
“The new members are stepping up and making contributions right away,” Cox said.
Most recently, the team competed in the Pinehurst Classic over the past weekend. The event was held at the Legacy Links Golf Course, located in
Aberdeen, N.C. After three rounds of play, the team settled for a fifth-place finish behind Coastal Carolina, UNC-Wilmington, UNC-Chapel Hill and Wake.
The windy weather and course maintenance made match play increasingly difficult, according to team members.
“It was really windy, with 15 to 20 mph winds constantly coming off of the lake,” Cox said. “They had just aerated the greens as well, so they were bumpy.”
Will Vanlandingham, a junior in business administration, shot a final round of 75 and finished tied for eighth individually.
“The course was tough to begin with and the conditions made it even tougher,” Vanlandingham said. “But we played hard and got a top five finish.”
The team’s next tournament is slated for the weekend of March 27 and 28 at the South Carolina Open, where as both individuals and a group, it will be pushing to improve in the conference standings.
