The last time WVU Tech hosted a River States Conference tournament, the Golden Bears lost their grip on a big lead late. It led to a playoff, and Rio Grande came away with the conference championship.
Seven months later, with the RSC Tournament again set for Glade Springs next May, the Golden Bears will host the RSC Fall Preview next week looking to get that taste out of their mouths.
The event will start Monday on the Cobb Course with 10:30 a.m. tee times, and the final round is set for a shotgun start Tuesday at 9 a.m.
Tech had a five-stroke lead with three holes to play at the conference championship in May but could not hold off the RedStorm, which won on the second playoff hole.
“I told the guys when we were riding into the golf course, make somebody else beat you. Don’t beat yourself,” WVU Tech golf coach Garrett Goosman said. “And unfortunately, we ended up beating ourselves because we didn’t play as well as we should have.”
The bright spot to come out of that day was Bryson Beaver winning the individual championship and qualifying for the NAIA Tournament. Now a junior, Beaver is the leader of the team and has three top-10 finishes this fall, including tying for first at the Georgetown College Invitational and runner-up at the Ohio Christian Fall Invitational.
Beaver withdrew from his last tournament because of injury, but is expected to be ready next week.
“I would think it would take a small army to keep him from playing on Monday and Tuesday,” said Goosman, last year’s RSC Coach of the Year.
The Golden Bears have also gotten strong outings from senior Santiago Zambrano, including a victory at Ohio Christian, four strokes ahead of Beaver. The key for Zambrano has been developing consistency.
“He always seems to get close, but he can’t put it together two rounds,” Goosman said. “He might have an even-par round and then shoot a couple over or something like that. Have a not so great round, where he can’t get everything going for him. So it was good to see him win, especially as a senior, win a tournament, because he’s obviously only got a handful of tournaments or so left that he’s gonna be playing in. He works hard. He comes to practice every day and puts in the work.”
Freshman Roberto Llobell is coming off Monday’s victory at the Roger Merb Invitational at Shawnee State. It was a one-day 36-hole tournament and Llobell gutted it out for a four-stroke win (even par).
“We were at the golf course at 7:30 in the morning and didn’t leave till seven o’clock at night,” Goosman said. “So it’s a long day on the golf course. A lot of playing golf, it’s mentally exhausting, physically exhausting. So it was good to see Roberto kind of fight through those mental struggles and challenges. Whenever you get to that 31st, 32nd hole, you’re mentally exhausted, you’re physically exhausted. So it was good to see him just kind of pushing through and finishing strong.”
Three other freshmen have played well for the Golden Bears in Alvaro Iglesias, Mathias Maldonado and Summers County graduate Sean Cooper. Cooper was tied for 12th at last season’s state tournament for the Bobcats, which was four shots behind champion Wheeling Central.
“Alvaro and Mathias has been playing well,” Goosman said. “They played well last week, the week before, so they kind of snuck into the top five, top six guys there. They didn’t get to go to the first tournament, but they’ve been playing consistently the last two tournaments. So it’s good to see them playing well and kind of fighting for those.
“Sean Cooper’s been playing well for us. He’s played in almost every tournament for us in the fall. He didn’t play super, super great his first one, but he’s kind of gotten that figured out. He’s been playing all the other tournaments, and he’s been scoring pretty well for us as a pretty consistent five man.”
Goosman is looking forward to a competitive two days of golf, even though the weather forecast is calling for more rain.
“We’ve just got to kind of bring our ‘A’ game and be ready to play regardless of the conditions and what everybody else is doing,” he said. “We’ve got to focus on what we can control. That’s the most important thing. We can control our game and how we play. We can’t control how the other teams play. So go in and control what we can control and hopefully we end up playing well for two days in a row and we might have a chance there on the last day.”
