By Brandon Ladd

Oswego State golf returns to the links in the upcoming weeks after its winter break, still eying a conference championship in the Empire-8 conference. 

The team finished third out of seven teams in the Empire-8 Conference Championship, which was held in Baldwinsville on Oct. 2-3, 2021. This serves as the first two rounds of the Conference Championship, with the final two rounds coming April 16-17, 2022. Currently, the Lakers sit 17 strokes behind St. John Fisher College, who leads the tournament with a combined +52. Head coach Mike Howard believes that the team can shoot even lower than the fall season and it starts with properly managing what the course gives them. 

“Well, avoiding trouble as you know [on the course],” Howard said. “If it means leaving the driver in the bag on certain holes, that’s what you do. If you are in trouble, get out of trouble and move forward. Don’t try to make that one-in-a-million shot out of the woods because then you hit 17 trees and you are in deep trouble. Just manage the golf course and try to post the lowest score on each hole, if everybody did that I think we would see improvement in our team results.” 

The team’s usual lowest scorer, senior Ryan Fecco, is in a position to build off a good fall segment of the schedule. After the first two rounds of the conference tournament he sits tied for first place at +10 with Josh Kienz of Utica College. Fecco has finished in first or tied for first, in five tournaments now for his career. He is also consistent, finishing in the top-10, 15 out 26 career tournaments at Oswego State. Fecco still wants to be a better finisher coming down the stretches of rounds during the month of April. 

“I think my game is what I have,” Fecco said. “I just need to work on closing a round better the last few holes. I get a little too ahead of myself sometimes, I think about my score I’m going to shoot the last few holes and mentally it ruins me a little bit. So, then I struggle the last few holes and I need to fix that so I finish strong.” 

Expectations can be set high for a player who has won tournaments, consistently shoots the best on the Oswego State team and could win the individual Conference Championship leaderboard come April 17. But Fecco feels that he still sets expectations higher for himself than any other person could for his game. 

“I set pretty high expectations for myself,” Fecco said. “I’m way too hard on myself and I’ll be the first one to tell you that. So, I set the expectations on myself and I don’t particularly worry about being the best player on the team. If somebody beats me that day, that’s great. So, I just worry about putting a good number out there and trying to help the team be the best it can.” 

Howard can not not anticipate much improvement from players over the winter months because of the harsh upstate New York winters taking away time from practice. Usually, the most improvement by players would happen during the summer, according to the head coach. The team has just began hitting inside the Romney Field House to get swinging the clubs as a team again. The wait to get outside continues after the snow and rain heavy previous months. He is hopeful that time to get outside to practice comes before the first tournament in Hershey, Pennsylvania on April 3-4. 

Fecco and his teammates have high hopes for the spring season and the goal of winning a conference championship is still there. 

“I think we all had stuff to work on [this winter],” Fecco said. “And I know we all want to win the conference tournament really badly as a team. We talked about that this offseason and I think that really is our team expectation. We all want to be the best versions of ourselves, to help our team win.” 

Image via Oswego State Athletics