During this past week, from March 23-25, the Trinity men’s golf team traveled to La Verne, Calif. to compete in the West Cup Tournament at the Bear Creek Golf Club. The Tigers ended up finishing sixth out of 17 teams total with an overall score of 932. Highly ranked schools such as Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, University of La Verne, Southwestern and California Lutheran all placed above Trinity, with University of Redlands winning the tournament. Trinity finished ahead of Christopher Newport University, Pacific Lutheran University, Chapman University, Willamette University, Hardin-Simmons University, Occidental College,  Gustavus Adolphus College, Linfield College, Lewis & Clark College, Pomona-Pitzer Colleges and Whittier College.

Even though the Tigers ended with a top-half finish, the team feels that they were not able to put things together until the third and final round of play. In the last round of play, the Tigers finished on a strong note with a score of 302.

“We made up a lot of ground in the final round to finish in sixth place and not pick up any losses from schools ranked behind us nationally,” said senior captain Tyler Lehmann.

First-year Trevor Warner added, “It did not go as well as we would have hoped. We were unable, as a team, to post a good score until the third round. I would have liked us to be able to finish in the top four, which would help bolster our chances of going to nationals.”

Warner, who had the best individual finish for Trinity at 11th place, shot a 229 overall and picked up the best Trinity score at par-72 in the second round. Lehmann finished with a final score of 233, which landed him in 23rd place, junior Kalen Vos finished in 26th place, senior Austin Jung came in 33rd place and senior Erik Long-Goheen finished 54th.

“I think I drove the ball fairly well all tournament. I hit about 75 percent of the fairways, which I was happy about. I also putted fairly well all tournament,” Warner said.

Next up, the Tigers get ready to head to Georgetown, Texas, to play in the West Regional Invitational hosted by Southwestern University from April 6-8.

“We are getting ready for Southwestern’s tournament in a couple of weeks, where our goal is to win and become one of the top 20 ranked teams in the country,” Lehmann said.

After that, the men wrap up their regular season with the SCAC Championships in Boerne, Texas at the Tapatio Springs Hill Country Resort and Spa, April 21-22. Trinity is the defending champion of SCAC, and last season’s win was the first time they had won since 2005.  Last year, the Tigers did not make it to the NCAA DIII National Championships.