Golf Looks Forward to Quick Spring Season

The men’s and women’s golf teams spring seasons start this coming weekend, when both teams leave Vermont for their first tournaments.

On Friday, April 13th, the Men’s team will travel to Dartmouth, Massachusetts to play in the Westport Hampton Inn Invitational. This will be one of three competitions for the men’s team this spring, and will be followed by the Williams Spring Invitational and the Nescac individual tournament.

Senior captains Bennet Doherty ‘18, and Joe Ko ‘18 will lead the Panthers this spring in their swan songs as Panthers. They competed in the Nescac Qualifiers in the fall, where they finished 14th and 29th, respectively. Also returning this spring is Sophomore Jeffrey Giguere, who tied for 2nd at the Saratoga Invitational and 3rd at the Qualifiers.

Doherty and Giguere will represent Middlebury at Nescac Individuals after they paced the Panthers at Nescacs in the fall. To go along with Doherty’s 14th-place finish, Giguere finished in a tie for third place as the best first-year competitor in the competition.

“I think that we’ve gotten a fresh start, because we missed qualifying for the Nescac Championships, and we’ll treat every week as if it’s the final tournament,” Giguere said, when asked about Middlebury’s outlook this spring. :We’re going to give it our all and hopefully get a win to reinvigorate us for the next season.

“We’ve been up on the course, at least this week, working on mostly our wedge game because it’s the first thing that becomes rusty when you take time off.

Especially because the course is closed right now, it’s so wet that they can’t open it up for public play. We’re just trying to scrape together whatever we can do, especially with a tournament coming up in a couple of days,” said Giguere, when asked about preparing for Friday.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, April 14th, the Women’s Golf team will travel to Poughkeepsie N.Y, to play in the Vassar Invitational. Future competitions will include the Jack Leaman Tournament at Amherst and the Williams Spring Invitational. They will hope to continue their strong performances from the Fall, after placing in the top three in four out of five competitions. Senior captains include Katharine Fortin ‘18 and Hope Matthews ‘18. Fortin placed 1st out of 69 participants in the Phinney Classic last season, while finishing 4th at the Wellesley Invitational, and 9th at the St. Lawrence Invitational.

“The short spring season is definitely hard coming out of a cold winter,” Fortin said, “but we will continue to be up there with Williams and Amherst, especially if we stay on top of our games and keep up our strength through the winter months.

The Panthers are also energetic about their current supply of talent, and are optimistic about the future.

“It has been really interesting to watch the team grow and develop over the past few years,” Matthews said. “I think we have gathered a lot of great talent in recent recruiting and it is definitely showing in our results. Although we have not won any tournaments yet, we are getting closer to catching our competitors each time. I’m really excited to see how we can challenge Williams, Amherst, NYU, and other opponents in the spring.”