By Harrison Leone
Assistant Sports Editor
As the winter frost finally beings to dissipate, the golf team is gearing up for one last regular season tournament before the Atlantic 10 Championships later this month.
The Bonnies will travel south to compete in the Longwood Manor Invitational at Longwood University in Farmville, Va. The meet will take place April 12 and 13. At the invitational last season, SBU finished in fifth of 10 schools.
Coach John Powers said the invitational will give his team a good opportunity to get a few more rounds in prior to the championship.
“This weekend, we’re going to try to get 54 holes in, no matter what,” Powers said. “We’ll also have a chance to play on another southern course and get some experience on southern grass that will help us be better prepared for A-10s.”
The Longwood Invitational will also give Powers one last opportunity to set the final lineup for the championships.
“There are a lot of different scenarios that could happen — it’s still very up in the air,” Powers said. “This weekend, we’ll really start in our evaluation rounds to see who’s playing the best golf right now.”
The previous two weeks saw the team compete in two invitational tournaments. In the first of the two, a one-day affair held at La Salle on March 24, SBU earned a seventh place finish of 11 schools. Among A-10 competition at the tournament, the Bonnies came in second out of three schools, finishing five spots behind host La Salle and one spot ahead of Fordham.
Two Bonnie golfers earned top 20 scores at La Salle. Freshman Josh Stauffer shot 73 and tied for second while senior Brian McKenna tallied a score of 79 which was good for a share of 20th place. For Stauffer, the tournament marked the fifth time he earned a top-10 finish this season.
Following their trip to La Salle, SBU headed to Grasonville, Md. to compete in the Whiting-Turner Invitational hosted by Towson. At Towson, St. Bonaventure tied for 16th place with Iona out of a field of 24 competing teams.
Powers said this year’s performance at Towson was an improvement over the 2012 effort.
“Beating six teams is a plus, but we feel like we could have beaten a few more,” Powers said. “Obviously, you’d like to finish as high as you can, but it’s definitely an improvement over last year.”
Powers said he felt his team had to focus on performing better on the green and short-range shots.
“All around, we still need to keep improving, but I felt we did a pretty good job going from tee to green in our last two events,” Powers said. “We need to work on our green game now, it’s the short game that has been the slowest thing to come around.”
Powers said being forced to train inside because of uncooperative weather has had a negative effect on this element of his team’s game.
“It’s been the area of our game we’ve had the least opportunity to work on,” Powers said. “In spring golf especially, you’re often faced with long puts and chip shots that look routine but can, in reality, can be tough to get a feel for.”
At Towson, McKenna paced the Bonnies in shooting a 233 over three rounds, which equated to 17 strokes over par and tied for 30th overall in the individual scores. Stauffer and Junior Chris Mackey tied with a score of 293, 23 over par.
Powers commented that McKenna is often a barometer for the rest of the team’s performance at any given tournament.
“We need him to be up there near the top. When he’s our best player, the team usually finishes pretty well,” Powers said. “We’ll look to him to keep things going for the rest of the season.”
The Towson Invitational marked the first time in the nine tournaments of Stauffer’s freshman campaign that he finished outside the top 15. Powers, however, has the utmost confidence in the Bradford, Pa. native.
“He didn’t have his best event, but it’s extremely rare to see any player in the entire country stack up that many quality performances in a row,” Powers said. “We’ve gotten so used to seeing him at the top of our lineup that sometimes you forget the general peaks and valleys that come with the sport. I fully anticipate he’ll be at or near the top in these upcoming events.”
