The Asbury men’s golf team takes home the national title after winning the NCCAA National Championship last Wednesday in Palm Coast, Florida, with a 3-day score of 918, beating out Cedarville University by just seven strokes.
“It’s really exciting. I haven’t been able to stop smiling since Wednesday,” first-year Coach Scott Ferguson said. “I’m so proud of all our golfers; they played so well, grateful to be part of it. I told our teams in our first meetings that I believe we can not only make these types of tournaments but that we can win them. I believed they could, so Coach Crouse and I just made it a point to constantly remind the students to believe they could!”
The win was no easy feat. At this scale, playing in a tournament comes with its fair share of challenges the men had to overcome.
“The most challenging part was managing the emotions of everyone, golfers, parents, and us coaches,” Ferguson said. “As the scores got closer and there were fewer holes, emotions came into play. We do a good job 90% of the time, but when you put a National Championship on the line, everything becomes a pressure cooker.”
As well as walking away with the title, the men walked away with three All-American titles on the team. Senior Marcos de Ezcurra came in second overall, just missing the medalist spot in a tiebreaker. Also making All-American was senior Victor Vargas and freshman Garret Sturges. Additionally, Coach Ferguson received coach of the year, which is a big deal as a first-year coach.
“I am so honored, but it really says more about the student-athletes in our program than it does about me,” Ferguson said. “Coach Joe Crouse and I are just so grateful to spend time investing in our golfers; it makes it really easy to coach them.”
This win is a huge mark for the men and a big step forward for Ferguson’s program.
“My hope is that this is just the beginning,” Ferguson said. “The University has done a great job investing in the golf program with our indoor facility; as coaches, we will do our best to recruit some more great students that are passionate about golf. I hope this is the first of many, but regardless we will enjoy this one! Only thing left to do is find where we’re going to hang the banner.”
On top of the men winning the tournament, senior Faith Wiley on the women’s team won third overall as an individual, bringing home yet another All-American title for the golf program.
“I think I played pretty well for the conditions,” Wiley said. “I didn’t strike the ball great. I had to get a lot of up and downs this week to save par.”
On top of being tired after so many competitions back to back, the playing field in Florida was more challenging than in past tournaments.
“There were like 31 girls and I would say anywhere from 12 to 15 of us were pretty evenly matched, so there was some really good competition down there,” Wiley said. “I think finishing third was good. I wanted to finish top 5, and top 3 is even better,” Wiley said.
Wiley was able to put up an impressive score of 237 for the three days. This tournament concludes the fall season for both the men and women as they have no tournaments until the annual tournament in Georgia this spring.
