Men's golf team holds its own in Division I event
Feb 16, 2006
The Irvine Valley College men’s golf team received quite an honor recently when it was invited to participate in a Division I tournament.
The Lasers competed and more than held their own in the Pala Mesa Invitational, hosted by Drake University earlier this week.
“It was a learning experience and good exposure for Irvine Valley College,” Irvine Valley Coach Ben Burnett said.
The tournament began with a 36-hole round on Monday and concluded with 18 holes on Wednesday at the Pala Mesa Resort Golf Course in Fallbrook.
The 15 teams included mostly Division I schools. They were Arizona, Army, Bradley, Binghamton, Creighton, Drake, Loyola of Maryland and Western Illinois. UCLA and San Diego State were also there, but used their junior varsity teams.
Also, top-rated Division II school Northeastern State of Oklahoma and NAIA schools Cal State San Marcos and Oklahoma Christian participated.
Irvine Valley was the only community college to take part.
The Lasers ended up defeating three Division I teams and finished 11th overall out of the 14 scoring teams.
Irvine Valley had a three-round total of 915. It was just 10 strokes behind Army, 13 strokes in back of Loyola and 16 strokes behind Drake.
The UCLA JV squad won the team championships with a 9-under par score of 855. Oklahoma Christian was next at 868 and Cal State San Marcos finished at 871. UCLA’s Craig Leslie won the individual championship with a 68-71-71=210.
Four-year college golf matches are played with five golfers per team and the four best scores are kept to make up a team’s total.
Irvine Valley was paired with the UCLA JV team and Drake the first two rounds and on the last round the Lasers were paired with Army and Bradley.
The Lasers’ final 18-hole team score of 73-73-74-76=296, for a 5-over par, was the fifth best final round team score and only three strokes behind tournament winner UCLA JV’s final round.
“It was a lot of fun,” Burnett said. “Drake University has shown an interest in one of our players, Jimmy Willingham, and that helped us get into the tournament. “I thought Jimmy and Cory Cannon demonstrated in all three of their rounds that they could be starters for most of the schools competing in this tournament.”
Cannon opened with a 1 under par round. His three-day scores were 71-76-74=221, which was 5-over par.
Willingham shot 73-76-76=225. Also for Irvine Valley, Travis Reeves shot 80-79-73=232, Aaron Levine finished at 80-84-73=237 and Bret Becker came in at 83-88-85=256.
Becker’s rounds were IVC’s throw out scores after each round.
Individual highlights for Irvine Valley included having Reeves and Levine each shoot a final round 1-over par 73 and having Willingham and Cannon, who were playing in back-to-back groups, eagle the same hole.
Willingham also had an eagle on another hole.
Irvine Valley next competes in the Rio Hondo Invitational on Friday.
The Lasers begin Orange Empire Conference action March 6 against Saddleback.