GCSU golfer takes PBC Player of the Year honors

Bobcat golfer swings his way to PBC Player of the Year

Francisco Bide won the honor of being the Peach Belt Conference’s Player of the Year at the 2010 PBC Golf Championship.

Bide, a management major, is a senior member of the GCSU golf team.

Jimmy Wilson, GCSU’s head golf coach, has coached Bide through his years at GCSU and was the one to nominate him for the honor.

“We as coaches will nominate our players for all-conference honors.” Wilson said. “Then all of the nominees are sent out to the coaches to be voted upon. You cannot vote for your own players. I nominated Francisco, but I could not vote for him. So he was actually chosen by all of the other coaches in the Peach Belt Conference, I guess you could say. He was the leading vote-getter.”

Bide competed for the title against his own team and the others of the PBC.

“There are 11 schools in Peach Belt that displayed in golf,” Wilson said.”There were all of the players from 10 other teams, plus ours.”

Bide is the third Bobcat to have won PBC’s Player of the Year in golf, but is the first since 2003.

“I started (playing) when I was 12, so I’ve been playing for 10 years,” Bide said.

He first enjoyed the sport as a hobby with his family to substitute for basketball in its offseason.

“I actually started with my dad and my brother one summer.” Bide said. “I used to play basketball and there were no basketball games during the summer. It was like something for me during the summer.”

Bide is originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was given the opportunity to go to high school in California for his junior year.

“My junior year of high school, I did an exchange student program,” Bide said. “I went to California for a year. I did my junior year of high school there and then I went back and finished high school back home.”

After graduating high school in Argentina, Bide traveled back to the United States to begin college at GCSU.

“The whole idea when I did the exchange student program was because I wanted to come to the States and play golf and study,” Bide said. “While I was there, I met the assistant coach at the time when I was a freshman here. He was from Argentina. His name is Jose Medrano. He used to play here, too. He’s the one who got me started here at Georgia College.”

Bide has been playing golf at GCSU for the past four years. This season marks his last, which will end in the NCAA tournament, either in the Southeast regionals May 3-5 or, if Bide and the rest of the Bobcats play to their potential, in the national championship May 17-21.

Posted by Courtney Murrah on Apr 23 2010. 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