The Binghamton University golf team will commence its fall season by traveling several hundred miles to play in the Mid Pines Intercollegiate Big Sky Tournament in Pinehurst, N.C., this Monday and Tuesday. The 2005 U.S. Open was played at Pinehurst Number Two, one of 29 golf courses in one of the most famous golf complexes in the world.

This upcoming season for the Bearcats will signify the beginning of a new era in team history, characterized by the golf team’s participation in a dissimilarly new conference with unfamiliar opponents and by the team’s new makeup of younger players fighting for opportunities to prove themselves.

After last season, the Division I golf sector in the America East dissolved due to an insufficient number of major schools wanting to fund golf teams, which left only two schools, Binghamton and Hartford University, in the original America East wishing to continue their golf programs. Also after last season, the Big Sky Conference, based in Utah but consisting of teams from other regions of the country, shrunk to four teams.

Because of their new conference placement, the Bearcats’ uniquely different schedule this year consists of tournaments in states like North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana and Utah, which will necessitate a great deal of traveling and will provide fiercer competition on all cylinders for the new-look Bearcats.

‘Playing tournaments in North and South Carolina, as well as in the west, will present great opportunities and experiences for the players as well as give them greater feelings of reward once they succeed,’ said head coach Nick Lasky. ‘The quality and competition levels of our tournaments will be greater this year because, instead of consistently playing against teams ranked between 150th and 250th nationally, we will be facing teams ranked 50th to 150th nationally.’

This year’s team roster will look vastly different than last year’s because former senior captain Jeff Wolniewicz graduated, along with former seniors and two other regular starters, Aaron Ungvarsky and Tom Hackett. But Lasky believes the recruitment of big time freshman prospects Jake Katz, Mike Surdey and Andrew Marler, and the intensive summer workouts and vastly improved play of sophomore Patrick Donovan, junior Brian Golkiewicz and sophomore Mike Corbo, will create a positive team atmosphere and will blend well with veterans and this year’s senior co-captains Zach Vinal and Ryan Gabel.

‘Over the last two years and especially this year, we’ve had lots of new faces, and we hope we can gel as a team and learn from and feed off each other as the season progresses,’ Lasky said. ‘This year, unlike last year where four out of the five starters were permanent, more opportunities are available for everyone which will leave me with some difficult choices every week as far as who to start. Players will have control in their hands through qualifying rounds and playoff matches to determine who will be starting in a given week.’

This week’s starters will be Vinal and Gabel, last year’s regular and junior J.J. Shearer, Donovan and Katz. Katz, from Buffalo, played outstanding golf in the summer and earned his way into the starting lineup. Donovan, who was also phenomenal in the summer, looks to solidify his role in the starting lineup after losing it last season to Hackett.

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The Binghamton University golf team joined the America Sky Conference this past July, a brand new conference featuring six other schools from around the country. Joining the Bearcats in the new conference are former America East conference mate Hartford, former Big Sky members Idaho State University, University of Northern Colorado, Sacramento State University and Weber State University, and independent programs at University of Texas-Pan American and Utah Valley State College.

The America East and the Big Sky did not have enough golf schools, so the merger will allow those programs to continue a competitive schedule within a conference structure. The first America Sky Men’s Golf Conference Championship will be held Sept. 24 to 25 as part of the Weber State Purple & Red Invitational in Layton, Utah.