Men's golf up in both polls as men, women prepare for final regular season tourney
The UHV men's golf team is up a couple of spots in both the NAIA Coaches Poll and the Bushnell/Golfweek Coaches Poll, just announced on Friday.
The Jaguars moved up to No. 17 in the NAIA poll while they moved up one spot to No. 16 in the Bushnell/Golfweek Top 25.
The movement in the rankings comes before the men and women head to the Texas Wesleyan Spring Texas Intercollegiate April 15-16 at Squaw Creek Golf Course in Willow Park near Fort Worth. It's both team's final tournament before hosting the Red River Athletic Conference tournament April 29-May 1.
"This tournament is a strong one to close our regular season," said head coach Garrett Adair. "Both our men and women will get to put themselves to the test and get prepared for the conference tournament. We want to continue our momentum from previous tournaments this spring and hopefully set ourselves up for a run at two conference titles."
The men are coming off a seventh-place finish at Wayland Baptist's The Battle at Laughlin Ranch in Bullhead City, Ariz., March 25-26. The field of that tournament featured nine ranked teams.
Enzo Dakiche turned in his sixth Top 10 performance out of eight tournaments this season by shooting 73-69-75—217 at the Par 72 course. The sophomore from Paris, France, was named Red River Athletic Conference Golfer of the Week after his showing out west.
He's helped the Jaguars average 295.5 strokes per round as a team in their eight tournaments this season. Dakiche and Joshua Van Der Wath are inside the Top 50 golfers in the nation with Dakiche ranking 37th and Van Der Wath at 50th.
"We've seen a number of our guys step up at different times this season," Adair said. "This tournament is another chance for our guys to prove we can count on all of them from top to bottom. I'm very excited to see what we can do this week."
The women have experienced a resurgence this spring, finishing in the Top 5 in each of their last three tournaments including a T-2 finish at the Claud Jacobs Invitational in February at The Club at Colony Creek.
Emmily Bickelmann has led the charge for the Jaguars with six Top 10 finishes including winning the Schreiner Shootout March 4-5 for her first career victory.
The Jaguars rank 49th nationally on the women's side according to Scoreboard Powered by Clippd, which is the official statistic website of collegiate golf.
"We're playing some really good golf right now," Adair said. "I'm really proud of the way the girls have responded this spring. We're in a good spot to contend for the conference title in a few weeks; we just have to keep our focus and build on that momentum this week."
The tournament, which will be 54 holes for both the men and women, kicks off at 8 a.m. Monday.