NIACC men's golf team earns Golf Coaches Association honor

LAS VEGAS – The 2018-19 NIACC men's golf team has been recognized by the Golf Coaches Association of America as a 2019 NJCAA Division II Mark Laesch award winner.

Teams were recognized based on improvement in adjusted stroke average per round from the 2017-18 to 2018-19 seasons.

The NIACC team of Ben Boerjan, Austin Eckenrod, Jackson Hamlin, Matthew Heinemann, Zach Martin and John Patterson had a 13.61 adjusted stroke average.

This was an unexpected surprise to be notified that we received this award," NIACC coach Chris Frenz said. "It's really a nice accomplishment and a tribute to the efforts of last year's team.

"This is the first year for the Mark Laesch award. he was the founder of GolfStat (the gold standard for college golf statistics) and passed away last summer, so this is really quite a nice honor.  I always have teams that strive to be their best and it's really nice to see their hard work pay off with something like this."

The other honorees by the Golf Coaches Association of America were Davidson (10.56) NCAA Division I, NCAA Division II's CSU Dominguez Hills (9.8), NCAA Division III's Rutgers-Camden (15.13), NAIA's Loyola-New Orleans (9.93) and NJCAA Division I Ranger (18.2) from NJCAA Division I.

The NIACC men open the 2020 season at the Graceland Invitational on March 27-28.

"The great thing about it is this year's team is basically the same as last year's (minus Ben Boerjan)," Frenz said, "so if they can continue to work and make needed improvements, hopefully, we can be where we want to be come May."