Six Laker men competed at the Fall Regional Preview at Gates Park Country Club in Waterloo, Iowa. The preview featured some of the top teams in the region that the Lakers will be competing against to make the national tournament for the second year in a row. This will not be an easy task for the Men's team as the regional teams are very talented.
Lakers finished 6th out of 7 teams.
Kirkwood 285 (-3) Alexandria Tech 287 (-1) Iowa Central 292 (+4) Hawkeye 296 (+8) DMACC 299 (+11) Iowa Lakes 307 (+19) Southeastern 319 (+31).
"I'm really proud of our guys. We shaved 15 strokes off of our team score from Monday to Wednesday. Gates Park sets up similar to Fort Dodge where it challenges players to think their way around the course and have control of distances/ball flight. The tournament Monday proved that we had a lot of room for improvement in those areas. We had a short meeting Tuesday night to go over different ways to attack Gates Park and how to avoid the double and triple bogeys. The guys responded well and did a good job of minimizing the big numbers." said Coach Myers. "Even though I'm happy with the progression of our young team, we still have a lot of work to do in order to achieve our goal this spring."
Individual Results:
Sophomore, Janlo Zaayman, capped off a great round with a birdie on 18 to finish T-4th (-1) 71. Freshman, Breyden Johnson, carded a solid 76 (+4) that landed him T-24. Freshmen Christian Prambs and Kale Ladwig came in with 79 and 81 to wrap up the counting scores on varsity. Freshman, Jude Walz, is working through some swing changes and struggled to get comfortable. He battled hard and tallied 87 on the day.
Freshman, Chaturon (Mark) Buachan, competed as an individual for the Lakers. He was able to turn in a 79, making big improvements from Iowa Central's Invite to the Regional Preview.
"We still have to iron out some poor decision making and lack of focus. These struggles are to be expected with a very young team. We just need to continue to sharpen up on the little things." added Coach Myers
Laker men head to Joplin, MO to compete at the Fall National Preview this weekend. Starting with a practice round Sunday (9/17), followed by 36 holes Monday and 18 Tuesday.