BELLINGHAM, Wash. – The Western Washington University men’s golf team will compete in the NCAA Division II West/South Central Super Regional starting Monday at Brookside Country Club in Stockton, California.
The Vikings are the No. 6 seed in the West Region, and one of 20 teams in one of the four NCAA II super regionals played around the country. The 54-hole tournament will feature 18 holes each on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on the Par 72, 6,777-yard layout.
WWU won its second consecutive and eighth overall GNAC Championship, and will be playing in its 19th consecutive NCAA II Championships dating back to the start of the program’s move to Division II. Fourth-year head coach Luke Bennett has led Western to the NCAA Regionals each season at the helm of the program, placing 10th in 2014 and 19th in 2015 and 2016.
“The guys are excited to be here and ready for the opportunity. They’ve all put in a look of hard work lately and now they get to put that preparation to work,” said Bennett, the 2016 and 2017 GNAC Coach of the Year. “It should be a very exciting regional championship with a lot of teams in the mix.”
Western’s lineup will feature the same five golfers that captured the GNAC Championships in back-to-back seasons:
• Jeffrey Marcum (Sr., Richland, WA) – First Team All-GNAC, top 10 in all 5 spring tournaments
• Chris Hatch (Sr., Mukilteo, WA) – First Team All-GNAC, 2nd at GNAC Championships
• Brett Johnson (Sr., Ridgefield, WA) – First Team All-GNAC, team-high 12 rounds of par or better
• Michael Butler (So., Sammamish, WA) – 75.21 scoring average (+3.64 to par), 20th at GNAC Championships
• Cody Roth (So., Bellingham, WA) – T12th at GNAC Championships in only spring start
Western put together a very successful spring season, finishing in the top 5 in all five of its tournaments.
The Vikings will be returning to Brookside Country Club for the second time this spring, after having a successful 3rd-place finish in the 22-team Visit Stockton Cactus Thaw! that was held Feb. 13-14 to open up the spring schedule. In that tournament, Marcum tied for 6th (-5, 139) and Johnson tied for 25th (-2, 142) in the 36-hole tournament that featured 123 golfers and served as a preview of the regional tournament.
The Vikings are one of 80 teams, with another 32 student-athletes competing as individuals, that will participate in the 2017 NCAA Division II Golf Championships. At a minimum, the top three teams and the top two student-athletes not with a team from each regional (regardless of region) will advance to the finals May 22-26, at Reunion Resort in Kissimmee, Florida. The remaining eight team berths will be allocated based on the regions represented in the prior year’s medal-match portion of the championships, with the maximum number of teams from a given region capped at seven.
The NCAA II West/South Central Super Regional will be co-hosted by the University of the Pacific and Visit Stockton.
-WWU Athletics-
