VIDEO: Randy Wylie Interview
JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – For the third-straight season and the fourth time in five years, the No. 19 Carson-Newman men's golf team prepares to make an appearance in the NCAA Division II Men's Golf South/Southeast Regional beginning Monday at the Rock Barn Country Club in Conover, N.C.
The Eagles come into the event after capturing their fourth South Atlantic Conference title in program history back at the beginning of April, granting them an automatic bid into the championship tournament.
Head coach Randy Wylie will rely on the same group that captured its most recent conference crown in this week's event. The team was placed at fifth in the NCAA Regional Selection back on April 27.
"It's interesting to have a whole month in between competitions," Wylie said. "We try to compete a lot within the team and the guys are really competitive anyway by nature, so it's been a challenge to keep them kind of sharp and then the last week, you know, we've had finals so that's challenging also."
Tom Forster (Oundle, England) will lead the charge for the C-N after winning his second tournament as the top medalist in the field at the SAC Championship. He was five under in the three-day tournament, winning the event by one stroke.
Anthony Marcinelli (Knoxville, Tenn.) notched his fourth top-20 finish of the year at 12th. He recorded a +6 score of 222.
Jake Headrick (Maryville, Tenn.) and Jackson Tyler (Wilmington, N.C.) both shot 72 on the final day of the conference championship, helping them to finish in a tie for 13th at eight-over while Alex Hutson (Newport, Tenn.) rounded out the Eagles on the leaderboard at a tie for 25th with a 13-over total of 229.
Between the five young men competing for the Eagles, they hold a 73.71 scoring average. They landed at 20th in the latest edition of the Golfstat rankings.
Forster, Headrick and Marcinelli will be making their second-straight showing in the Regional with the Eagles after being a part of last year's team that garnered a ninth-place finish. Unlike that squad, Wylie's five-man group this year contains no senior starters.
"They're a young team but at the same time, they have enough experience and enough toughness about them and enough grit to kind of fight for it," Wylie mentioned.
Also found in GCAA poll was 15 of the 20 other teams the Eagles will be competing against. Eight of the regions' 10 team selections currently sit in the top 25 with a majority of the top-10 hailing from the South Region, including No. 1 West Florida, No. 2 Florida Southern, No. 3 Nova Southeastern, No. 4 Barry, No. 5 Florida Tech and No. 6 Lynn. The rest of the top 10 comes from the Southeast Region – No. 7 Newberry, No. 8 USC Aiken, No. 9 Limestone and No. 10 Columbus State.
"It's great competition coming up so we've got to just kind of focus on what we do and not get concerned about what the other teams are ranked or what everybody else is doing," Wylie assessed. "If we just play one shot at a time, take care of our ball, take care of our own score, that's our best path to success. That's what we have become better at as the year has gone on."
The top-three teams from the regional and top-two individual student-athletes not competing with a team will advance to the finals held at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at the Shoals, Fighting Joe Course in Muscle Shoals, Alabama from May 21-25. The eight team berths remaining will be allocated based on the regions represented in last year's head-to-head medal play portion of the championships.
The Rock Barn Country Club is a facility a C-N team has not played on since the 2012 regional. This year's tournament will take place on the Jones Course which houses a 72 par course that spans 7,169 from the longest tees.
The South/Southeast Regional, hosted by Lenoir-Rhyne, will take place from Monday through Wednesday at the Jones Course. A full recap and results will follow each day of action with live scoring being provided through Golfstat.
