By KAROLINA JURESIUTE, Senior Reporter
NWOSU Rangers Golf officially started its season on Aug. 31 with both men and women’s teams qualifying that weekend.
“It was a long, hard weekend of golf for everybody, but it was good to just get back into the swing of things,” women’s and men’s golf head coach Dan Campbell said. “Some of the kids on both of my guys and girls side really came back sharp and ready to go. Obviously, some people took some time off during the summer. Since we play all fall and spring, summer is a little bit of a down time.”
Coaches saw a lot of good signs out of everybody, even the players that didn’t come back on their A game that weekend. Campbell said he had conversations with players on how to get to that next level.
“We are very excited for the upcoming season here,” Campbell said. “We want to win our conference, but we also want to go to regionals. That’s really our ultimate goal.”
He said the Rangers felt like they were really knocking at that door last year and came close to heading to the regionals.
“We were excited to be bringing back all six girls who traveled to conferences and five of our guys who traveled as well,” Campbell said. “The only player that is not coming back as a player is actually still here, as our assistant coach. He was my captain last year, did a fantastic job as a leader and we are very excited to keep Cade Seymour around and bring him into the coaching staff and just keep building on to the momentum that we had last year.”
The Rangers were voted as the most improved of any team in Division 2 golf in the country on both sides. The Rangers jumped up more spots than anybody in the region by far. Campbell said, keeping on that continuity coming into this year, they are excited, and have some high goals which they think they can accomplish.
“This season it is nice having everybody returning instead of last year [when] it felt like it was a whole new program, where we had just a handful of returners, and it was a little bit of a learning curve for everybody,” Campbell said. “So many new people just were figuring out the balance between of being a student-athlete. Coming in as freshmen is hard.”
The men’s team has added nine new players for this season which include a couple of transfers and a couple of freshmen. Coaches are excited to see the new players bring in new talent and new attitudes coming in and pushing the returners.
“We are excited with what we have seen out of a lot of these new guys so far, and I think we have a really good group, and they fit in with the team fairly well,” Campbell said.
Both men and women will have five two-day events, plus a one-day event against rival school SWOSU this season.