The Hillsdale College men's golf team ended the fall season in impressive form with a lineup stocked with young talent, and now the Chargers are looking to add more for next year's 2024-25 campaign.
In November, the Chargers signed Jackson Piacsek (Pewaukee, WI/Waukesha North) and Aryan Sharma (Melbourne, Australia/Haileybury College) to join the program in the fall of 2024, adding two gifted amateur golfers to the fold in what looks like another strong recruiting class for Hillsdale.
Piacsek is one of the top prep golfers in the state of Wisconsin, leading Waukesha North to a third-place finish in the WIAA Division I state championships as a junior last spring while finishing tied for third as an individual in the competition. It was the second year in a row that Piacsek earned All-State honors in Wisconsin, along with a WIAA regional title in 2023 and back-to-back Classic 8 first-team All-Conference honors. Piacsek holds an impressive +0.8 handicap and has a low round of 67 in competition, while also standing out the AJGA and Junior PGA circuits -- finishing tied for eighth in the 2023 AJGA Future Legends championship and tied for fourth in the 2023 Wisconsin Junior PGA Championship, among other honors.
A two-sport athlete who also plays varsity basketball at Waukesha North, Piacsek is an impressive student, earning membership in his school's National Honor Society and Business Honor Society while also earning AP Scholar with Distinction honors.
Sharma is an international product from the other side of the world, Australia, who's racked up an impressive amateur resume in his home country, including five top 10 finishes in junior tournaments in the Australian states of Victoria and Tasmania alone in 2023, including a victory in the Associated Grammar Schools of Victoria Independent event. The Melbourne native boasts a +2.2 handicap and an impressive low round of 65, and also serves as the captain of the Haileybury College golf team, helping Haileybury finish runner-up as a team with a score of 219 in the 2023 AGSV State Championship in May, while earning runner-up honors as an individual with a 68. That was the second straight year that Sharma had earned runner-up honors in the AGSV final for Haileybury, and the third-straight top five individual finish in the event for the golfer, who also played in 2021 and 2022.
A strong student as well as a strong golfer, Sharma won a Math Olympiad award at Haileybury and has received academic distinction every year of high school so far.
Both players will look to add to the Chargers' lineup in the fall of 2024. Hillsdale finishes out the 2023-24 season with play this spring, starting with the Saint Leo Invitational on Feb. 19 and 20 in Dade City, Florida.
Photos are courtesy of the athletes. From left: Piacsek, Sharma