EAST GREENSBORO (September 12, 2018) –North Carolina A&T men's golf begins season No. 2 with new building blocks designed to improve upon their inaugural season in 2017-18. The Aggies will open the 2018-19 season Sept. 28-29 in the National Black College Hall of Fame HBCU Invitational Golf Classic.
The classic will be played at the par-72, 6,954-yard Summer Grove Golf Club in Newman, Ga. It will feature the top Division I and Division II historically black college or university golf teams from across the country. It is the largest HBCU golf tournament sanctioned by the NCAA.
The Aggies will wait 2 ½ weeks before competing again as they will travel north to play in the two-day Maryland Eastern Shore Collegiate Challenge hosted by the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Berlin, Md, Oct. 16-17. The men finished fifth last season at MDES's event. Four days later the Aggies will be in Gulf Shore, Ala., to participate in the Black College Association Golf Tournament.
The final golf tournament of the semester will be the annual Tiger Invitational hosted by Savannah State University. The men had a strong first two rounds last season in Savannah, Ga., before finishing sixth. A new semester will bring on the Lonnie Barton Invitational hosted by LIU Brooklyn in Daytona, Beach, Fla, March 4-5.
N.C. A&T will stay in sunny Daytona for the week as the Gary Freeman Spring Invitational hosted by Bethune-Cookman University will take place March 7-8. A busy March for the Aggies will continue as head coach Richard Watkins will take his team to the coast to Wilmington, N.C., for the Cape Fear Invitational.
Maryland is the next destination for the Aggies as Towson University will host the Towson Spring Invitational, April 6-7. It will be the Aggies warm-up tournament before traveling back to Savannah for the MEAC Championship Golf Tournament, April 19-21. Another big championship event awaits three weeks later at the PGA Minority Golf Championships in Port St. Lucie, Fla.
Men's golf had its growing pains in Year 1 and they did lose their top golfer Luis Acevedo to graduation, but they return four golfers from last year's inaugural season and they added two outstanding freshmen and one junior college transfer heading into their second season.
Cody Lissner, Cameron Bryant, Austin Trent and Casey Lindo are back on the course while Diego Gonzalez and Xavier Williams were added as freshmen and Stefan Holczer transferred in from Tyler Junior College in Texas and will have three more years of eligibility.
“We understand there are two ways that we can get better. One of those ways is to improve the athletes we have and the other is to recruit better athletes,” said Watkins. “We accomplished both and now we have to see how that plays out on the golf course this year.”
