Saturday, April 27, 2024
by Evan O'Kelly, Assistant Commissioner For Communications

PORTLAND, Ore. – After successful campaigns throughout the 2023-24 season, the Simon Fraser and Western Washington men’s golf teams each earned berths into the NCAA West Region Championships announced by the organization on Friday.

Simon Fraser earned the No. 8 seed and Western Washington earned the No. 10 seed by virtue of the conference’s automatic berth after it won the GNAC Championships title earlier this week. In addition to the two GNAC teams, Grayson Giboney of Northwest Nazarene received one of the four individual regional playoff berths.

Simon Fraser led the GNAC with a scoring average of 290.2 strokes per round during the 2023-24 season, and was consistently the conference’s top-ranked team on the Clippd leaderboard. Senior Michael Crisologo led the league with a scoring average of 72.0 strokes per round, and claimed individual medalist honors at the GNAC Championships earlier this week. Freshman Denby Carswell ranked second in the conference with 72.3 strokes per round, and the Red Leafs had four of the conference’s top-10 individual scoring leaders overall.

The Vikings surged to victory at the conference event, finishing one stroke shy of the three-round championship record with a team total of 838 (273-287-278). WWU was led by Ryan Ho’s third-place finish, which included a GNAC-record tying round of 9-under-par 62 his first time through the championship course. Ho enters the regional ranked fourth in the conference with 72.6 strokes per round, while senior Seth King is fifth at 72.9 and sophomore Peter Dionne-Yahr ranks sixth at 73.0. The Vikings were second among GNAC teams this season with an average of 291.2 strokes per round, and advanced to the regional event for the 25th consecutive season.

Giboney earned his spot in the regional by way of a season scoring average of 72.6 strokes per round, a figure that ranked third among all GNAC players. Giboney capped off his stellar senior season by placing second at the GNAC Championships, shooting a 3-round score of 8-under-par 205 (68-64-73). Giboney heads to his second regional championship event, after the Nighthawk men qualified as a team during the 2021 season.

The 2024 NCAA West Region Men’s Golf Championships will run May 9-11 at University Golf Course in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The top-five teams and top-two individuals not on a team from each regional will advance to the NCAA Men’s Golf Championships, set for May 21-25 at Orange County National Golf Center in Winter Garden, Fla.

The 2024 women’s regional field will be released by the NCAA on Monday, April 29.