Normal, Ill. - The Illinois Central College Men's Golf team made the short drive east on I-74 to Weibring Golf Course on the campus of Illinois State University for the Heartland Fall Invitational where they took a runner-up finish in a loaded field. The tournament field had many perennial challengers including conference rivals Heartland, Parkland, Danville Area, Rend Lake and NJCAA Region 4 champion Black Hawk in the early season test.

ROUGH START
The Cougars dug themselves a giant hole early, falling to 11-over par as a team after just the first six holes. 

"Two balls bounced out of bounds, two splashed in the water, and one ball bounced off a cart path into a spruce tree," coach Sean Kennedy said. "We also had a couple of missed short putts and the Leaderboard clearly showed our struggles. We fell to 7^th place in the nine-team field and I was concerned with how our inexperienced team would handle adversity."

SOME COUGAR GRIT
The Cougars showed some grit and found their footing as Wyatt Novotny (FR-Bureau Valley HS) chipped in for an eagle and All American Connor Watson (SO- East Peoria HS) made a couple birdie putts, to give the team momentum to climb up the leaderboard. ICC played the final 12 holes just 1-over par as a team to end Day 1 sitting in 3rd place. 

The Cougars started Tuesday morning in attack mode, immediately leaping Parkland and working on chasing down leader Black Hawk. Jacob Voss ( Fr- Fulton HS) and Carson Oliver (Fr-Mt. Zion HS) both made a couple of late birdies to help the Cougars fire a tournament best round of 3-over par 287. Ultimately, the comeback fell four swings short as ICC finished as Tourney Runner-Up.

PRAISE FROM KENNEDY
"We gave a determined, resilient team effort and focused on the task at hand by making difficult, competitive shots to start our comeback. For the second time this week, Connor finished as the individual Tournament Runner-Up and Carson earned another Top 5 finish by placing third. And both Jacob and Alex Kuykendall tied for eighth place to win their first individual Top 10 awards of the new season. Our players have some homework to catch up on and then we'll begin preparing to host the Cougar Classic at Metamora Fields after Labor Day." 

Tournament Results: https://scoreboard.clippd.com/tournaments/244701/scoring/team

WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE COUGARS
Cougar Fall Classic
Tuesday/Wednesday, September 8-9
9:00 am 
Metamora Fields
Metamora, IL