After 10 regular season tournaments and seven months of preparation, the Seattle University men’s golf team will look to end the year with a strong finish at the Western Athletic Conference Championship April 29-May 1 at Rio Secco Golf Club in Henderson, Nev.
At the conference championship, Seattle U will be led by seniors Rob Seibly (Spokane, Wash.) and Will Holdridge (Lynden, Wash.). Seibly has finished as the top Redhawk in five tournaments, averaging 74.8 strokes a round. He tied for 11th at the Dash Thomas Memorial Sept. 24-25 and has a low round of 68, which he has shot twice. Holdridge has averaged nearly a stroke higher than Seibly throughout the year but also has a top-10 finish, ending the Pat Hicks Thunderbird Invitational Feb. 11-12 tied for sixth. Holdridge’s lowest round of the year was also a 68, and he has finished as the highest-ranked Redhawk in a tournament three times. Both Seibly and Holdridge have played in all 10 tournaments of SU’s 2012-13 season.
Colter Morton (Pocatello, Idaho) will join Seibly and Holdridge as senior leadership at the championship. Having played in all one tournament for SU, Morton’s best finish came at the Firestone Grill Cal Poly Invite Oct. 8-9 where he tied for 11th, the highest-ranked Redhawk that week. He’s averaged 78.2 strokes a round in his nine tournaments with a low round of 70.
The only underclassman to make the trip, David Torres (Armenia, Colombia) will also provide some firepower for the Redhawks. Torres has played in nine tournaments, averaging 76.0 strokes a round and tying for the team lead in two. He, along with Seibly, won 2.5 points at the Cypress Ridge Match Play March 28-29 and was the only SU player to win his match in the final against CSU Bakersfield March 29. Torres’ low round on the year is a 70, which came during the second round of the UTEP Miner Invitational Oct. 26.
Rounding out the SU lineup, Jordan Beals (Enumclaw, Wash.) will play his fifth tournament of the year as a part of the Redhawks’ scoring team, with three of those tournaments coming in the last month and a half. He is averaging 78.3 strokes a round with a low-round score of 71. Since March 11, Beals has been taking 77.77 strokes per round, two-thirds of a stroke better than his year-long totals.
In the team competition, Louisiana Tech enters the tournament with the highest Golfstat ranking, coming in at No. 84 in the country. UT Arlington, San Jose State, and Denver are all in the top 100, however, ranked 92, 98, and 100 respectively, while UTSA is just behind that group at 102. Individually, Cody Blick of San Jose State is the highest-ranked WAC golfer, rated at 219 by Golfstat. Two other golfers—Justin Shin of New Mexico State and Gordon Webb of Idaho—are in the top 300, and eight golfers are in the 300-400 range of the Golfstat rankings.
The WAC Championship will be a three-round tournament that takes place over three days at Rio Secco Golf Club.