BELLINGHAM, Wash. – For the 19th consecutive season the Western Washington University men’s golf team has been selected to participate in regional competition of the 2017 NCAA Division II Men’s Golf Championships.
The Vikings will be the No. 6 seed in the West Region and will compete in the South Central/West Regional that will be played Monday, May 8 – Wednesday, May 10 at Brookside Country Club in Stockton, California.
The Vikings have now advanced to the NCAA II Championships every season dating back to the school’s first year competing at the NCAA level in 1999. 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.
“I felt like we had a great spring and had been in the mix, but this formalizes things and is a great achievement for our team,” said Bennett. “This is a unique and fun opportunity for our team to put what was a very good season behind them, and set new goals for advancing in the postseason. We have as good of a shot as anyone in the region to advance, as we’ve had wins and losses against everybody during the season. It is a balanced regional field, now it is just time to go out there and get the job done.””
WWU is coming off a first-place finish at the 2017 Great Northwest Athletic Conference Championships, successfully defending the league title held last week at Coeur d’Alene Resort Golf Course in Idaho. The Vikings claimed their eighth overall GNAC Championship, finishing the 54-hole tournament at 19-over-par.
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 season. In that tournament senior Jeffrey Marcum (Richland, WA) tied for 6th (-5, 139) and senior Brett Johnson (Ridgefield, WA) tied for 25th (-2, 142) in the 36-hole tournament that featured 123 golfers.
Senior Chris Hatch (Mukilteo, WA/Kamiak) finished 2nd at the GNAC Championships and heads into the NCAA Tournament with a team-best scoring average of 72.63 (+0.96 relative to par). Fellow seniors Marcum (72.89) and Johnson (73.86) are the top three leading scorers on the team. Sophomore Michael Butler (Sammamish, WA/Skyline) and Cody Roth (Bellingham, WA) were also part of WWU’s starting five at last week’s GNAC Championships.
“We are looking forward to another great opportunity to play in the NCAA Tournament,” added Bennett, who competed in the NCAA Regionals as a player from 2002-06. “We take great pride in keeping the streak alive of advancing to the NCAA Championships, as it is a tribute to all the work that has done by the players and coaches past and present, that make WWU golf such a great tradition.”