The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Portland grad Piersall taking his golf game to Bryant
Portland grad forced to move after CCSU eliminates program
Nick Piersall’s freshman year of college golf was like a really good iron shot close to the pin, only he didn’t know there was a slope to the green. His ball — his commitment to play at Central Connecticut State — rolled off the back edge.
That’s kind of how Piersall, who played at Portland High, felt when Central said early this year that it would eliminate the program after the spring season. It was a decision born of budgetary cuts deemed necessary for the long-term health of the athletics department, officials said.
Between that January announcement and the end of golf season in May, Piersall became a good college player, his team won the Northeast Conference championship and he got to tee it up in an NCAA Regional alongside some players he believes have games good enough to one day play on tour.
Now, this fall, he will re-tee himself up at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island, as both a golfer and business student.
“It’s too bad to see what happened with the program at Central,” Piersall said. “We won the conference and we were only going to get better. It’s a shame, the decision they made to cut golf. Me, Coach (Kyle Gallo), the rest of my teammates, we’re still a team and we plan to keep in touch with each other, we just don’t have the Central logo behind us.”
In fact, Piersall’s first college choice out of Portland came down to Central and Bryant. This year, he said he also considered the programs at St. John’s, Western Kentucky and Nevada. Bryant, though, also plays out of the Northeast Conference, so he knows the golf terrain. His new coach, Charlie Blanchard, is happy to grab him the second time around.
“He was a heck of a player in high school and he played very well his freshman year in college,” Blanchard said. “I think he’s got tremendous upside. He is a hard worker, he’s smart, he wants to be good and he’ll put in the time to get better. At the college level,
that’s imperative. He’ll have the internal work ethic to manage college and external distractions.”
Blanchard called it a “huge advantage” to add a player who’s already played well at the Division I level.
“When you have kids coming in as freshmen, the thinking is they’re going to be good and they may never pan out,” he said. “A kid might have been a great high school player, but they come to college and their game might not translate. With Nick having been successful as a freshman, getting him as a sophomore, I know he’s a good student, a great kid, he’s already done it. He’s already proven he can play at that next level.
“I would think right away he’d be one of my top five guys, no questions. I fully expect Nick to be one of the top players in our conference over the next
three years.”
At Portland, Piersall was a state champion as a junior, winning the Division IV title with a round of 69 and helping the Highlanders to their first of three straight state titles. As a senior in 2017, he tied for second in D-IV.
The fall golf season at Central, stacked with tournaments in and outside of Connecticut, was quite the NCAA Division I introduction for him.
“Me and other freshmen, we got great experience. We got used to college golf,” Piersall said. “It is a much different atmosphere and competitiveness than junior golf or high school golf. I remember my very first tournament I played in in September. I was nervous, but it was a very different experience. When you are put in pressure situations, your body acts differently and your brain processes things differently. I didn’t win, but being young, I gave myself good opportunities.”
The spring season included
two events in March and a full slate in April, during which Piersall was posting rounds in the lowto-mid-70s. For the season, he averaged 75 and change for 18 holes.
April concluded with the conference tournament at the LPGA International Hills Course in Daytona Beach, where Central beat Robert Morris by 12 strokes for the title. Piersall tied for seventh with freshman teammate Joe Tucker with rounds of 71, 76 and 76 and wound up as an All-NEC second-team selection.
Two weeks later, at the NCAA Regional in Kissimmee, Florida, Central finished 14th among 14 teams. For Piersall, looking back it was more about the overall experience than the outcome.
“To this day the NCAA Regionals was the best golf experience I’ve probably ever had because I hadn’t really played with many kids that you think, ‘They’re going to play on the PGA Tour in a year or
two,’” he said. “Florida, Purdue, Vanderbilt, Arizona, these are top 40 schools in the country. It was cool to see how they go about warming up for tournaments, and their approach is different than ours at this next level. All in all, it was an awesome experience.”
Going forward at Bryant, he wants some of those types of experiences for himself, and he’s eager to do in the same conference after surviving a golf cut of a different kind.
“Next year I want to strive higher and higher. I’m ready to work on things and get better,” Piersall said. “I think what I need to improve on is the mental part of golf, the process, and the game management. I’ve improved with the physical part, and ball striking and putting, but need to get that much better with internal body levels when in pressure situations, or when things are not going well, how do I get out of it and put myself back and track?”