South Mountain News
By Jim Richards
For SMCC
April 23, 2007
SMCC men’s golf coach Travis Brown sounds a whole lot more like the legendary Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd than he does Alabama antagonist and popular singer/songwriter Neil Young when he’s talking about his team’s immediate future.
“We want to get back to Alabama,” Brown said, referring to the upcoming 2007 NJCAA Division II Men’s Golf Championship to be played in Scottsboro, Alabama in late May.
It’s been three years since Brown guided the Cougars to the D-II national title and with an incomparable freshman class, he feels that his club is poised to win another one.
“I feel very confident,” Brown said. “I’ve got a very young team. I think they’re hungry for a win and hungry to get to Alabama.”
But, the Cougars have to get there, first.
After missing out on reaching the national tournament for the first time in six years a year ago, the ACCAC-DII-winning Cougars will unleash several of the nation’s top junior college golfers to the 2007 NJCAA Region I Division II Championship to the Rio Rico Resort in Nogales later this week (April 27-29).
Leading the pack is Gabe Plaza, who is ranked 10th in the nation (at the DII level) with a stroke percentage of 72.077. Teammate Nicholas Banfield (73.00) is 21st followed by Brian Carruthers (28th, 73.677), Keenan Holt (38th, 74.154) and Devin Schreiner (50th, 74.846).
“We’ve had a really strong year,” said Brown, in his ninth season at SMCC. “We’ve been in the runner-up position to a lot of Division I teams.”
One of those times occurred in last week’s Mesa Invitational, which featured the six ACCAC D-II teams to compete in the Region I tournament as well as two top-ranked D-I teams out of Texas (No.1 Odessa CC and No.5 Midland CC) and, of course, No.2 Scottsdale CC, the tournament winner.
With a team score 601, the Cougars defeated all other ACCAC DII teams. Mesa CC was closest with a team score 607. Unranked Bentley Nakasawa showed SMCC’s depth as the team’s top individual golfer along with Holt at 149 while Plaza struggled at 155.
“(Plaza) will be ready for the regional,” Brown said.
In order to reach the 16-team national tournament SMCC needs to finish in the top two this week.
“It’s going to be like the season is starting over,” Brown said. “Everybody starts fresh.”