Official NCAA Announcement
INDIANAPOLIS – Recently-celebrated Great Midwest Athletic Conference champion Findlay qualified as a team to compete in the Central/Midwest Regional portion of the NCAA DII Men’s Golf Championship on May 7-9.
The Oilers are serving as host at the Findlay Country Club for the NCAA Central/Midwest Regional as one of four different regionals being conducted around the country (Atlantic/East; South/Southeast; South Central/West).
The Great Midwest will additionally be represented by the Trevecca duo of junior Larken Whittemore and freshman Blain Turner, who was the conference championship medalist in his first attempt at Four Bridges Country Club.
Whittemore and Turner are competing as individuals along with Drury’s Craig Stefeureak and Ferris State’s Andrew Hammett.
The official NCAA announcement had the championship field with 80 teams and 32 student-athletes competing as individuals.
At a minimum, the top three teams and the top two student-athletes not with a team from each regional (regardless of region) will advance to the finals May 21-25, at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at the Shoals, Fighting Joe Course in Muscle Shoals, Ala.
The remaining eight team berths will be allocated based on the regions represented in the prior year’s head-to-head medal play portion of the championships, with the maximum number of teams from a given region capped at seven. The finals will be hosted by the University of North Alabama.
Findlay won the 54-hole conference tournament aided by an 18-hole postseason record of 290 fired in the first round in poor weather conditions.
Head coach Dominic Guarnieri and his lineup of Dylan DeWitt, Justin Roth, Cam Wardley and Luke Kelly, held a five-shot lead at the end of day one before eventually winning by a seven-shot margin to halt a streak of five straight men’s golf trophies won by Trevecca.
The final men’s golf Midwest Region rankings had the Trojans in 10th. Turner impressed with a three-round total of 220 at the Great Midwest Championship and emerged as the 2017-18 conference scoring average champion in the postseason to date.
Live scoring for the tournament will be provided by host Findlay through the Golfstat online system.