NMU golfers back on course today
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MARQUETTE -- The men's and women's golf teams at Northern Michigan University start their fall sprint today before the weather turns for the worse.
Both teams will be at the Bulldog Fall Classic at the Katke Golf Course in Big Rapids and hosted by Ferris State. Two rounds will be held today and Tuesday.
Each team will fit in four tournaments over the next month before storing away the clubs for the spring -- which will likely start in late winter at points much further south.
"We're super excited to be back into it," Northern head coach Ben Johnson said in an NMU Sports Information news release previewing the fall season. "The kids get the summer to play in some competitive tournaments and practice, and now they're really itching to get back into competitive golf at the collegiate level. We're really excited and looking forward to get things going."
Joining the Wildcat women will be a roster of teams mostly with connections to the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, with host Ferris, Wayne State, Purdue Northwest and Wisconsin-Parkside as current members. Also in the fray are former GLIAC members Northwood and Walsh, along with Lewis and Cedarville.
"We're really excited ... because we're going to have one of our upperclassmen and our team captain, Haley Bolander, back in the lineup after redshirting last year," Johnson said. "She's a great leader and has a great work ethic, and on top of that, she's a good golfer, so those scores are going to be huge for us in the fall and definitely in the spring.
"We have a couple of new freshman girls coming in that I think are going to bring a lot of positivity and a good work ethic with them."
The men's field joining NMU are the host Bulldogs, Purdue Northwest and Roosevelt from the GLIAC, along with Northwood, Walsh, another former GLIAC member in Ohio Dominican, Lewis and Cedarville.
Johnson has a pair of freshmen on the Wildcats men's team who starred at Marquette Senior High School last season.
"We lost some good players to graduation last year, but with that, we were able to bring in a couple of exciting freshmen -- Boden Moore, who just won the club championship over at the Marquette Golf Club, and Easton Aho, who’s coming in from Marquette also.
"They grew up best friends and played junior golf together, and now they’re going to play college together.
"And (the) same thing with the women's side (as) with the men's side, everyone is really getting along well with everyone. They just didn't miss a beat, and we're really excited for our guys' team."
Fans can follow along using the website Scoreboard, at scoreboard.clippd.com, for live scoring during the rounds. Tee times will be displayed on nmuwildcats.com when available.
"Our schedule's very similar to years past, so we're getting very familiar with these courses," Johnson said. "Katke is a very scorable course, and we're lucky enough that mostly everyone that's new to our team has played it at some point or another when they were playing in junior tournaments, so both the newcomers and returners are very familiar with it."
Temperatures in Big Rapids are forecast for the low 70s each day, sunny today and a 60% chance of light rain on Tuesday.
The men's team jumps right back into competition a week from today at the two-day Warrior Invitational at Wayne State in suburban Detroit, while the women join the men again in a couple weeks at the Flyer Fall Invite in Lemont, Illinois, and hosted by Lewis University.
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Northern Michigan University women's golfer Madison Martens tees off at a past Wildcats' meet. (Photo courtesy NMU)