This season, Pitt- Johnstown’s men’s golf team had the best finish in team history. The team became eligible for the conference championships in 2007.
The team finished in second place at their conference championship Oct. 18. McDonald, though, said he had a rough tournament start.
“I started the tournament with a horrendous score of 84 simply because I could not get the speeds of the greens down. Eventually, I turned it around with a 75-69 to close out the tournament.
“Anytime you take a top-five finish in any of our conference tournaments, though, that’s something to be proud of.”
McDonald finished in fifth place, junior Josh Miller tied for seventh place and senior B.J. Torau tied for 19th place.
Senior Kyle McCullough also tied for 38th place. A total of 65 golfers participated in the tournament. McCullough said the team’s low preseason poll rank riled the team this season.
“We took our 10th place preseason rank personally,” said McCullough. “We showed we can compete with anyone out there.”
Torau said the team improved during the threeday tournament.
“To go out and shoot a team total 14 shots lower than the previous two rounds was exciting,” said Torau. “I know the team will learn from this and, in the spring, we are going to go out there and expect to be in contention at every tournament.”
Bluefield (W.Va.) State College took first place in the tournament with a total of 934, beating the Mountain Cats by two strokes.
Miller said there was great competition at the tournament.
“The competition was very stiff with players from all over the world, and we consider it to be a great victory to beat teams like Concord University (Athens, W.Va.) and the University of Charleston (W.Va.),” said Miller.
McDonald said that although finishing second was admirable, it wasn’t what the team had hoped for.
“Only losing by two shots definitely stings a little bit, and will make us work that much harder to make sure that we win the southern regional conference tournament in the spring,” said McDonald.
“We really wanted to win the tournament not only for coach Patrick Greer, but for Kyle (McCullough) since it was his last tournament before graduating and it hurts that we couldn’t do that.”
Team members said they will look to improve further before the start of the spring season.
“Its going to be a very long offseason for us to think about how we can save shots in every circumstance that we put ourselves in on the course, to make sure that, next time, instead of losing by two shots we win by 20,” said McDonald.
The conference tournament took place at Glade Spring Resort in Daniels, W.Va.