Oswego State junior Ryan Fecco has been a standout on the golf team his freshman and sophomore years and his junior season was no different. The biggest difference between his first two seasons and this last one was the length of the schedule.
The Oswego State golf team only competed in two events after waiting 14 months to retake the links as a team due to COVID-19. The team finished third in the Empire 8 Golf Championships located at Timber Bank Golf Club in Baldwinsville on April 25 and responded with a second-place finish two days later in the Elmira Invitational.
The team was carried to those results by the stellar play of Fecco who finished second in the Empire 8 Championships and tied for first in Elmira. This led him to be named the Oswego State Athlete of the Week for the week of April 26. Fecco said the biggest step forward his game, he has taken has been overcoming bad shots throughout his rounds.
“Honestly, learning from being able to get over stuff when I play mentally,” Fecco said. “I think mentally I am way better than I used to be and that is 90 percent of golf. So, when I hit some bad shots out there, I was able to just let it go.”
His head coach for all three of his seasons as a Laker, Michael Howard sees the same improvement that Fecco sees in himself.
“I think he has matured a lot physically and mentally,” Howard said. “His ability to let bad shots go, everybody is going to hit bad shots throughout the round, so being able to let that go and focus on his next shot.”
Fecco, who has bulked up from his first season as a Laker, credits his time in the weight room during the pandemic as a major help this season as well. His strength conditioning was the biggest focus for him during the long offseason and it paid off.
“I started working out a lot,” Fecco said. “I noticed I started hitting the ball a lot further. I just started to condition myself because I noticed I’d get tired towards the end of rounds and I haven’t really gotten tired these past few events.”
Howard poked fun at Fecco for his lifting ability his freshman season and the times that the golf team would work together. Howard claimed Fecco “could not perform many of the excercises” then but now is a much stronger golfer and has worked hard at it.
Both coach and star golfer agreed on the excitement surrounding a potential normal season in the fall and shared the sentiment that this season was shorter and less organized than past seasons. A feeling that many athletes and coaches have shared this spring sports season.
Fecco said that the strategies he used during this long layover between seasons can be applied to this summer.
“Just going to take the strategies from this season and bring them into the fall,” Fecco said. “It was crazy this year but we made the best of it and we will make the most of whatever next season brings us.”
The Oswegonian file photo from 2019
