Once again, the weather proved to be the Hillsdale Charger golf team’s biggest opponent.
Last Friday, five members of the golf team traveled to Ada, Ohio for the Polar Bear Classic at Colonial Golfers Club. In ten hours of continuous golf, the team played 18 holes back to back, finishing in eighth place out of the eight teams.
The Chargers carded a total tournament score of 719, cutting 19 strokes between rounds.
Freshmen Logan Kauffman and John Burke tied for 34th place in a field of 46. They scored identical rounds of 87-87 for a 174 total. Junior Patrick Nalepa and Freshmen John Duffy had rounds of 185 and 186, respectively.
For this non-conference tournament, there was no option to play a practice round.
“It was tough [playing the first round blind], but the majority of the course was right in front of you. There were only a few holes that it would have been very beneficial to have played before,” Nalepa said.
The biggest challenge of the day, however was playing in the conditions that seem to follow the team wherever they go: wind and rain, all day. At one point in the round, the players halted play without the official horn blowing, bound by a common sentiment that the diagonal rain was too much.
“[We] had to stop playing for a half hour because the greens were flooded. When we started playing again we had to take relief on some of the greens,” Burke said.
Coach Nathan Gilchrist said that “battling the elements is a part of the game.”
Gilchrist said a highlight of the tournament was when Nalepa made a 45 foot putt that broke three times up a hill even though the entire field was taxed by the wind and rain.
Nalepa played the 8th hole twice, with a total of only two putts – playing the hole one under for the day.
Burke had the advantage of growing up near the course, having played a few junior tournaments there in high school, though never from the back tees.
To illustrate the effect of the rain on play, Burke described a 470-yard par four in which he hit a driver and three wood just to get to the green.
“It was into the wind and you weren’t getting a lot of roll because the fairways were so soft. It was different for a par four,” Burke said.
Nalepa recounted a light moment in the day on the 18th hole – a par 5 with a fairway that went downhill to the right and an elevated green. Fifteen yards off the left side of the fairway was a cornfield. When his ball missed left, it hit an ear of corn and bounced back into play.
“Playing 36 holes was tiring, but they definitely give learning experiences. Playing 36 holes you make a lot of mistakes so you can definitely learn from that,” Burke said.
Gilchrist emphasized that the team “has come a long way since the first week together, though the scores are not entirely reflective of that all the time.” He added that the “biggest periods of growth will be in the offseason.”
“Our players are as capable as any other team we’ve played. I’m really proud of how they have handled the inaugural fall,” Gilchrist said.
The team will leave Thursday for the Conference Championship in Kentucky – the final tournament of the fall season. The team and individual champions will receive automatic bids to the super regional in the spring, which is the qualifier for Nationals. The 54-hole tournament begins Friday.
