Golf season is quickly approaching and the players are ready to get back on the green with their eyes on one prize: the Colonial State Athletics Conference (CSAC) championship.
The recently released CSAC preseason coaches poll ranks Cabrini’s men’s golf team as the one to win the CSAC championship this season above Marywood, Rosemont and Neumann. The golf team earned 73 votes, including four first-place votes in the poll.
“It’s an honor to be recognized by the CSAC’s head coaches. We look forward to a competitive spring season and hope to build on the progress we made in the fall,” Dr. Tony Verde, Cabrini’s coach, said in a recent press release.
Last year, Cabrini’s golf team placed third in the 2016 CSAC championships. All five players placed in the top 22 finishers. They hope to do even better this year.
Clay Anders, a junior marketing major, has been playing golf at Cabrini since freshman year.
“This season I think we are going to do really well. We won three tournaments in the fall and we came in the top five of every tournament so I would say I’m looking forward to CSAC’s the most because the winner of that goes to Nationals,” Anders said.
In the fall season, the team recorded top five finishes in all seven events. The roster this semester is the same as last for the men’s team so they have great chemistry and know each other very well.
“It’s a good thing that I can look at my teammates and know I’m playing golf with some of my best friends,” David Gall, a sophomore accounting major and finance minor, said. Gall has been playing on Cabrini’s golf team since freshman year and was one of Cabrini’s golfers to received the All-CSAC Second Team award for finishing in eighth place.
“I’m very excited to see how we end the season,” Gall said. “We have two senior captains who are vital to our team so I look forward to seeing how they can lead us. As a younger member of the team I just hope we can help them end their careers off with a CSAC Championship.”
Caitlin Bullock is a freshman business management major and member of the new women’s golf team. She said that they lost some women players so she is representing the women solo.
“We lost Megan [Savage] to a senior internship so now it is only me,” Bullock said, adding that it does not intimidate her at all.
Even if they cannot win the title of CSAC champions as a whole, the teams are cheering on their players to win tournaments and individual accomplishments.
“I would say one of the players on our team is going to win the CSAC individually, just don’t know who yet but I think one of us will,” Anders said, adding that he is confident in the team’s odds of winning.
The season beginnings on March 21 with men’s golf playing at Philadelphia University Spring Invitational at the ACE Club, while the women will play the St. Davids Golf Club for the Eastern University Spring Invitational. Cabrini will be hosting CSAC’s Saturday and Sunday, April 29-30 at Bellwood Country Club in North Coventry, Pa.
“As a team, the only thing we can look at is winning the CSAC. What happens after that will happen if it happens. We just have to focus on winning the CSAC and that is all,” Gall said.