The Elgin Community College men’s golf team ended their season with second year student Greg Witanen finishing the season by earning third place in the National Division tournament. He was one of the two players on the team this year.

“Greg is a second year player,” said Rick Olson, head coach of ECC’s men’s golf team.  “He was 2nd place last year, he went to the nationals junior league last year which is very hard to do. So it’s good he went to the national tournament.”

When asked if it surprised him that Witanen went to Nationals, he responded with “No, not really, because like I said he went to the national tournament the year before and this year he had a injury in his rib from swinging and that held him back this year quite a bit. So he didn’t play good overall this year but he came late in the season to get third place.”

 Olson had high hopes for this season, but when he was left with two, things quickly changed.

“I had hopes for a very good team,” said Olson. “But when the other players went to other colleges, that was the end of that. I did have some good players that were supposed to come. So maybe next year we will have a firm commitment because they left quite late in the summer and I wasn’t able to recruit more.”

Starting to plan for next season, he has gotten firmer commitments from incoming players and Brad Bartell is coming back for another season.

“I have five players fully committed so we should have a full team next year,” said Bartell. “And that will help our team standing. You need four players to have a team score and be eligible to play in the Skyway Conference. So that’s sixth and Brad has improved a lot this year. He’s cut a lot of high schooler mistakes and if he keeps improving through next year, he will be a better player.”

I concluded the interview by asking him if he was excited for any of the new players. “I would say three out of the five are definitely top tier golfer, I’m looking forward to them and Brad to be the nucleus of the team,” said Olson. I think we have a good core group and if we can add more players we will be a good team next year.”