Rattlers women win silver at ACAC golf championships
The Medicine Hat College Rattlers women’s golf team punched their ticket to nationals Sunday with a silver medal finish in the Alberta Colleges Athletics Conference championships at Edmonton’s Red Tail Landing Golf Club.
Nicole Schultz, Sierra Zukowski and Ciara Bonogofski will move on to the Canadian Collegiate Athletics Association championships in Durham, Ont. after another steady weekend on the links, including a fourth place performance by Schultz.
“It’s feels amazing. It’s kind of surreal,” said Schultz, who will go to nationals for a second straight year. “I always had faith that we could do it but it was always very leery in my mind that I would actually be boarding a plane, so it’s pretty awesome.”
But they aren’t the only members of their team who took home some hardware this weekend. MHC’s Trevor Moore was honoured with the title of ACAC golf coach of the year at Saturday evening’s conference banquet. Moore has been coaching the Rattlers for seven years and says it truly means a lot to be selected for the coaching honour by his peers.
“That’s always a very sincere form of acknowledgment, when the people you respect and work arm-in-arm with in this industry are the ones that put your name forward,” said Moore. “I know it sounds cliché, but success is never a unilateral thing. I’ve had players who had to get on board and buy into my strategies in order for us to have any success, too. So this is for every one of them who’s on board as well.”
Schultz added Moore is truly deserving of the recognition. In her time with the team, she says her coach has done more than simply improve her game.
“I call him my life coach, as everything he says relates to real life,” added Schultz. “He helps me a lot with my game, but just makes me a better person in general.”
Schultz finished fourth in the individual stroke play with a consistent 8989-178, while Zukowski finished close behind, in seventh, with a 91-94-185 and Bonogofski took 14th with a 116107-223.
“The weather conditions definitely affected the game through some winds, and it was very cold out there, but 89 is a very solid score in that condition,” said Schultz, adding she’s thrilled to be going to nationals with Zukowski and Bonogofski. “They deliver what they need to and I have full trust in them. They help me improve on my game, I just have faith in their capability.”
Schultz and Zukowski’s combined score of 363 put the duo squarely on the podium — 14 strokes behind the champion MacEwan Griffins and just one ahead of the Red Deer Queens.
“We had a focus at the beginning of the year, which was to board flights heading to nationals. We’ve achieved that,” said Moore. “It was a tight, gritty finish but the women played incredible. They hung in there and they battled hard.”
Red Deer College’s Shaye Leidenius won the women’s championship with a 22-over 84-82-166.
Brayden Schacher led Medicine Hat’s men’s squad with an 81-80-161, finishing one shot ahead of teammate Matthaus Taylor (80-82-162) and two ahead of fellow Rattlers Kent Lesko (82-81-163) and Kelton Hope (80-83-163). Augustana’s Michael Harrison won the event with a nine-over 77-76-153.
The men’s squad combined to finish fifth in the team play standings, while the Red Deer Kings and Portage Voyageurs shared the gold.
“I think we had some expectations for ourselves this year, some goals. One of our goals was to get better every week and for the most part we did that,” Moore said of the men’s team. “We got better and did the things we asked of ourselves and that’s all you can really ask.”
The Rattlers women’s golf team will head to Durham’s Royal Ashburn Golf Club from Oct. 17-20 for the four-round CCAA championship. The Rattlers took home a fifth place finish at the CCAA championship last year in PEI after winning the ACAC women’s championship.