MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Coming off its most successful season in program history, West Virginia’s golf team continues to gear up for the 2024-25 season, which the Mountaineers begin Saturday and Sunday as one of 15 participants in the Gopher Invitational, hosted by Minnesota at Windsong Farm Golf Club.
While there’s an extra element of excitement and more buzz around the program following last season’s appearance in the NCAA Championship, head coach Sean Covich says the lead-up to this campaign didn’t play out in the fashion he was hoping for.
“We just got done with qualifying, kind of called it fall camp, and this year we did a lot of qualifying,” Covich said. “Qualifying did not go great. I don’t think we played our best. It was kind of like a pillow fight to see who wanted to go. You’d rather see more under par or par rounds. Not great leading into the first tournament.”
Covich, WVU’s lone head coach since it reinstated golf in 2015, confirmed the Mountaineers will open the season with four returners and a newcomer among the five golfers representing the team. Seniors Max Green and Todd Duncan, junior Kaleb Wilson, redshirt freshman Hugh Donegan and true freshman Ryan Leach comprise are the five golfers representing West Virginia with a chance to factor into team scoring in the season-opening event.
Green, Duncan and Wilson were key pieces to last season’s team.
“He’s coming off an injury to his hand, but he’s fine now,” Covich said of Green. “He sat out most of qualifier, but got in the last three rounds. He was a coach’s pick and played really well in the rounds he got to play. He’s our best player from last year.”
Duncan, a Shady Spring High School graduate, showed marked improvement throughout last season and that ascension continued over the summer with a one-shot victory in the West Virginia Open at Edgewood Country Club. During that event, Duncan shot 67-65-65 on the par-71 course to finish at 16-under.
Covich said Wilson won qualifying among all players, and the head coach is hopeful the Knoxville, Tennessee native becomes a bigger factor in his third collegiate season.
Donegan, a native of Austin, Texas, will play competitively for the first time as a Mountaineer, as will Leach.
Nick Turowski, another true freshman, will compete as an individual for WVU in a nearby event in Minnesota after narrowly missing out on being included in the team’s five-man lineup.
“A bright spot is our freshmen played well. We have two in the lineup and one almost made it into the lineup, so excited about them,” Covich said. ”Ready to go to Minnesota for one of my favorite tournaments and a good field. It’s going to be a test right off the bat, so looking forward to going there.”
Last season, Covich’s team peaked when it mattered most, winning a home match — the Mountaineer Invitational — to finish off the regular season, before notching a fifth-place finish (the best in program history) at the Big 12 Championship.
That allowed WVU to qualify for NCAA Regional Play, and once there, Covich’s team finished in a tie for third place in Rancho Santa Fe, California, allowing them move on to the NCAA Championship. The Mountaineers ultimately finished 28th among 30 teams at NCAAs.
Four of the five golfers that represented the team at the NCAAs — Duncan, Green, Wilson and Pierce Grieve — are back, but a quartet of seniors in Jackson Davenport, Trent Tipton, Oli Menard and Will Stakel are no longer around. Davenport was the lone senior to play during the NCAA Championships.
“Everything we accomplished last year doesn’t have to do with this year’s rankings, results or give us any bonus points,” Covich said. “That was great and we enjoyed it, but we have to start building our resume right now and it all starts over. Just because you played well last year doesn’t mean you will this year.
“I crunched some numbers, and the easy thing to do is look at our lineup from NCAAs and say four of the five guys are back, you guys should be good. But the production throughout most of the year was done mostly by guys that weren’t in the NCAA lineup. Four seniors carried the load and they made up 44 percent of our rounds counted. We had guys step up late, but they were hit or miss most of the year. We’re hoping for more consistency rather than relying on whoever is in the lineup catching lightning in a bottle so to speak.”
Following the Gopher Invitational, West Virginia will participate in a new event — the Nemacolin College Invitational — that allows the Mountaineers to play September 30 and October 1 nearby Morgantown in Farmington, Pa.
“They’ve had Division II events and they reached out about wanting to do a Division I event and having us help facilitate that,” Covich said. “We’re more than happy to do that. Penn State is in it, and a lot of northeast teams. We’re excited to get that event running and see what it can turn into.”
In October, WVU will participate in Big 12 Match Play Championship in Hockley, Texas, as well as the White Sands Collegiate in Paradise Island, Bahamas.
That concludes WVU’s events for the 2024 calendar year, and the team will back up with competition in February 2025 at the Battle at Briar’s Creek in John’s Island, South Carolina.
“It’s all about getting them tournament ready and not wasting days or practice with a lot of fluff or whatever,” Covich said. “It’s really all about competition and getting the ball in the hole. We’re doing qualifying and making practice really competitive and really matter, so when we get to Minnesota and hand them a scorecard, it’s like, I’ve done this 20 times rather than what does your swing look like or what are you working on. That’s what we’re trying to do to make them tournament ready, so we’re not waiting to try and figure it out on the golf course, because we’ve already had to do that on the golf course so many times.”