Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
MEDICINE HAT – One score, each round, from every five-man team in the team competition at the PING CCAA national men's golf championship was thrown out.
If only the MacEwan Griffins could collectively throw one round out, too.
The very first nine holes they played was the difference between competing for a medal and finishing middle of the pack. They placed seventh out of 11 teams at Desert Blume Golf Club in the tournament, which wrapped up on Friday.
With 1211 points, they were 40 strokes shy of the podium and head coach Jodi Campbell knows exactly what happened.
"Looking back, I can literally break this down to the first nine holes we played when the wind was gusting," said Campbell, whose squad got an afternoon draw on Day 1 and faced conditions that teams who played earlier didn't. "The scores got elevated a little bit and unfortunately as good as the players played throughout the week, we were just never able to catch up to them.
"When you're losing 10 shots a day, by Friday now you're 40 shots back and it looks a lot worse than it was. The rounds that we played on Day 3 and Day 4 were as good as any of the top teams out there."
Indeed, the Griffins improved steadily throughout the weekend, scoring 317 in the opening round, 301 in Round 2, 297 in Round 3 and 296 in Round 4.
Boomerang d'Andre-Laurendeau won the men's team title (1138), while Humber (1147) claimed silver and Champlain St. Lawrence and Fraser Valley shared the bronze (1171).
"When we compare ourselves against some of those teams, we would have had to throw down an exceptional week to be able to compete with them," said Campbell. "But we had a pretty solid five players that went down there.
"Overall, the guys had a pretty solid experience. Any time you play at a CCAA national championship, it's a pretty special time."
Second-year Justin Berget flirted with the top-10 in the individual race, ultimately finishing T21 to pace the Griffins after rounds of 74, 72, 79 and 74 – 11-over on the Par-72 track. He was 18 shots shy of the podium (Boomerang's Laurent Desmarchais won at -13, while Humber's Conner Watt was second at -8 and Boomerang's Olivier Menard placed third at -7).
"Bergie had a great week," said Campbell. "He's been playing so good all fall – just absolutely consistent. His ball striking has improved so much over the year. He was just really, really focused all week.
"We had a couple of guys, who had some great performances, but if you were to look at the entire week, he was definitely our top player."
Rookie Reid Woodman (84-77-74-70) and fifth-year senior Josh Gorieu (79-78-75-73) tied for 33rd. Fifth-year Christian Solkowski (80-84-71-79) was T43 and fourth-year Noah Lubberding finished 49th (87-74-77-84).
Woodman had a remarkable 14-stroke improvement from his first round to his last as he adjusted to his first CCAA national championship.
"He's going to be a guy we're going to be looking at well into the future here, providing some leadership," said Campbell. "He ended up having the round of the week on Day 4 with a round of 70. He was 2-under that day. He really capped off the week well for the team. It was pretty impressive for a first-year guy."
While the Griffins will reload and try again next year to get on the medal podium for the first time in men's program history, they can at least take comfort in knowing they beat the other three ACAC teams in attendance, finishing ahead of Red Deer College, host Medicine Hat College and Concordia University.
The event was the final one in both Gorieu's and Solkowski's university careers and Campbell offered a shout-out to two great leaders the program will miss.
"Christian Solkowski and Josh Gorieu both had a great week. That's their last national championships as a Griffin," said Campbell. "It was pretty cool to watch them come out and not only play well but be those leaders in the room when we needed them to.
"Obviously, we were pretty proud of those guys."
