Apr 16, 2025
Mission accomplished.
St. Bonaventure’s club golf team has qualified — not once, but twice — for the National Collegiate Club Golf Association national tournament April 26-27 at Mission Resort in Howie-in-the-Hills, Florida.
Heading to Florida are co-captains Greg DeVries and Cam Engle, Nathan Waples, Joe Sodaro, Kevin Bucklin, Riley Mitchell, Ryan Muscarella and Tyler Sweda. The 36-hole tournament will be played on each Mission Resort course: El Campeón and Las Colinas.
The Bonnies punched their automatic ticket to nationals by finishing third at the NCCGA Zone Qualifier March 29-30 at Mansion Ridge Golf Club in Monroe, New York.
SBU and Fordham were tied for third after the 36-hole tourney, which only counted the top five scores each day from a team’s eight-player roster. But the Bonnies earned the nod to nationals because their sixth-place golfer (Waples) had a better score than the Rams’ sixth-place player.
Sodaro (74-79) was the medalist each day for the Bonnies. Muscarella (75-83) was second each day for SBU.
Even had the Bonnies lost the tiebreaker, they would have received an at-large bid to nationals because of the top 25 national ranking they earned since the NCCGA Zone Qualifier.
SBU is ranked 11th in the latest NCCGA poll and are the highest-ranked team from the Metro/Northeast region. Every school in the top 15, except for SBU, is from the South or West.
Ranked 34th in the final fall 2024 national poll, St. Bonaventure soared up the rankings this spring with team victories in two regional tournaments this month — at Foxfire at Village Green in Baldwinsville, New York, April 5-6 and at Far View Golf Club in Avon, New York, April 12-13.
Engle won the individual title at Foxfire, shooting 6-over par for 36 holes. At Far View, Sodaro won the individual title at 1-over, leading the Bonnies to a program record team score of +26, 47 strokes ahead of second place. Six of the top 10 golfers in the field were from SBU.
The program’s ascension since the 2021-22 season has been dramatic.
“After that season we made some adjustments, expanding our team roster to 20. And with an impressive freshman class giving us much of the high-level talent and dedication we have now, we were able to begin competing for wins more regularly,” DeVries said. “Our first win came in the spring of 2023 at Conklin Golf Club, giving us all hope that if we were able to continue progressing we could potentially compete for a national championship one day.
“That win gave a lot of the players a strong dedication to improve their own games to help out the team, and by the next year (2023-24), we were in the mix at a number of tournaments.”
St. Bonaventure has been ranked nationally by NCCGA every semester since spring 2023, finally cracking the top 25 this semester despite playing and practicing in less than desirable late fall and early spring conditions.
“I think we manage to play so well in these conditions at most tournaments because we are used to it,” DeVries said. “We try to practice at the SBU Golf Course regardless of the weather to prepare us.”
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About the University: The nation’s first Franciscan university, St. Bonaventure is a community committed to transforming the lives of its students inside and outside the classroom, inspiring in them a commitment to academic excellence and lifelong civic engagement. Out of 167 regional universities in the North, St. Bonaventure was ranked #6 for value and #14 for innovation by U.S. News and World Report (2024).