The tournament was held at Santa Rosa Golf and Country Club from April 22 to April 24. Sonoma State faced teams within the California Collegiate Athletic Association. The teams included Cal State San Marcos, CSU Dominguez Hill, CSU San Bernardino, Chico State, Cal State East Bay, Cal State Monterey Bay, and Stanislaus State.
Each team picked five players to compete in the tournament. Lucas Happy, Colin Huang, Ivan Sablan, Ryan Stewart, and Cole Kroeker competed for the Seawolves. The four best scores from each team were added up at the end of each day, and the winner was determined by the lowest score on the third day of the tournament.
Sonoma State finished the first day of the tournament in fourth place, tied with Chico State. Ivan Sablan placed eleventh and shot a score of 71. Lucas Happy and Colin Huang tied for 16th place and shot 72. Sonoma State shot 289 on Monday when adding up the top four players’ scores.
The Seawolves finished the second day of the tournament in first place, shooting a combined score of 277. Colin Huang led the Seawolves and shot 67 for the day, five under par. Colin Huang tied for first overall on the day with Wilhelm Berg von Linde, Cal State Monterey Bay. Ryan Stewart shot 69, 3 under par. Sonoma State’s total going into the third day was 566.
Golfer Ivan Sablan said the team had to adjust to the tournament conditions on the second day, “I believe the difference was slowly adjusting ourselves to the tournament conditions. We got off to a very slow start on the first day and got in the groove on the second day of the tournament.”
Head coach Val Vernhunce said that the difference between the first and second day of the tournament was the opportunities, “We had more opportunities the second day of the tournament, we executed our putts. I felt like the vibe was good the second day of the tournament.” Sonoma State finished the third day of the tournament in second place, three strokes behind Cal State Monterey Bay. The Seawolves shot a combined score of 285 for the day and finished the tournament with 851 total. Lucas Happy led the Seawolves on the third day shooting a 69 and finished the tournament with a score of 211.
Sablan said he was happy with how the team performed in the tournament. “I feel good about how we played, we definitely felt like we left some shots out there. However, for the amount of mistakes we made, we still finished second in the tourney and were only two shots off from the lead.”
The Seawolves placed first in the CCAA tournament last year. Sonoma State gets ready for NCAA West regionals. The tournament will be held May 7th to May 11th with the location to be determined. To stay in the loop with tournaments and statistics, go to sonomaseawolves.com.
