The Season Pass

    GCSU’s tennis and golf teams have both concluded their fall season and now will spend the next couple of months preparing for their spring schedules.
    Both of these teams’ fall schedules are very short, and with no major title on the line the coaches tend to use these seasons to evaluate their teams for the spring season and prepare players for the intense competition that they will face in the Peach Belt Conference schedules in the spring.
    Golf and tennis are both sports that tend to be dominated by PBC teams.
    Currently in golf, four of the top eight ranked teams, according to the Golf World/Nike Division II Coaches Poll, hail from PBC including GCSU, which is ranked No. 8.
    In men’s tennis eight of the top 30 teams ranked by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association were PBC members. GCSU ended the season ranked No. 24.
    Women’s tennis is very similar with eight of the top 20 ITA ranked teams coming from the PBC. GCSU finished No. 11.
    How did our teams do this fall?
    The word that comes to my mind is “okay.”
    Neither head golf coach Jimmy Wilson nor head tennis coach Steve Barsby seemed too  enthralled with their team’s performance in the fall season, but they both remained optimistic for spring.
    Both teams head into off-season conditioning eyeing a PBC championship in the spring.
    Williams did a lot of expirimenting in the fall season. Never, in any of the four tournaments his team competed, did he have his true starting line-up playing.
    Barsby took a different approach, keeping his better players at the top, however both the men’s and women’s teams should have more players added to the spring roster that will immediately add talent to the squads.
    So there is certainly no need to panic. These teams are going to be good.
    I predict that, come spring, Bobcat golf will be hard to beat. With a top-notch freshman class and veterans like Niclas Johansson and Kyle Collins, look for the team to be in the hunt for the PBC title.
    The tennis squads will also both be strong. . Look for them to improve as the season goes on, but don’t expect PBC titles this year against such stiff competition.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 12 2007. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry