After a solid fall season, the Hillsdale College men's golf team enters the spring championship season in 2024 with work to do, but all of their goals still in reach.
Coming off a difficult end to the 2022-23 campaign, Hillsdale opened in the fall by turning the reins over to its young incoming talent, fielding a lineup of three freshmen, one sophomore and one senior at the season-opening Malone-Glenmoor Invite on Sept. 11-12.
That move paid immediate dividends for the Chargers as Hillsdale's freshman trio – Oliver Marshall, Robert Thompson and Ryan O'Rourke – each shot a 54-hole score of 220 to finish in the top 10 and help the Chargers win their first team title in a collegiate golf event since 2020.
That set the tone for an impressive fall for Hillsdale, who took fourth with a solid score of 871 at the Kyle Ryman Memorial Invite in October, thanks to another top 10 finish by Marshall. The Chargers finished out the month of October with another top five finish at the Nemacolin Intercollegiate, with O'Rourke leading the way this time with an impressive third place finish individually.
Those results meant Hillsdale hit the halfway point in the season currently sitting in eighth place in the Spikemark-Clippd NCAA DII Midwest Regional rankings. The top 10 in the rankings at the end of the season will make the NCAA DII Central/Midwest Super Regional in May, and earn a shot to compete for a spot in the NCAA DII National Championship, meaning the Chargers are currently in the field, though needing to continue posting results to solidify their spot.
The Chargers will compete in five events in the spring, beginning with the always tough Saint Leo Invite against some of the top teams in the country at the NCAA DII level on Feb. 19-20 at the Lake Jovita Country Club in Dade City, Florida.
Hillsdale also will get multiple opportunities to go head-to-head with the rest of the top teams in the region at the Findlay Spring Invite on March 25-26 in Richmond, Kentucky, and the Ken Partridge Invitational on April 7-9 in Noblesville, Indiana, leading up to the 2024 G-MAC Championships hosted from April 22-24 at The Pearl in Owensboro, Kentucky.
It should be an exciting spring for the Chargers, who will lean heavily on their three freshmen who should continue to improve now that they've experienced multiple collegiate golf events and have had the winter break to continue to grow. Sophomore Maxwell Burns also has been a mainstay for the Chargers in the lineup so far, giving Hillsdale a solid foursome with significant growth potential in the back half of the season.
Hillsdale will look to add to that group with a consistent fifth golfer to round out the lineup and help push the Chargers to the next level as a team. Getting that consistency proved elusive for the Chargers in the spring, but Hillsdale has no shortage of options with a wealth of collegiate golf experience in seniors Darragh Monaghan, Gerry Jones, Jr. and Carson Stohler, and juniors Filippo Reale and Will Verduzco.
The full schedule for the 2023-24 Hillsdale College men's golf team is available here.