Illinois Wesleyan Men’s Golf Chosen for National Tournament

May 7, 2007

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — For the first time ever, the Illinois Wesleyan men’s golf team has been selected to participate in the NCAA Division III championships.

The Titans, who finished second to Carthage in last weekend’s College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin championships, earned a “Pool C” qualification to the NCAA tournament, which will be May 15-18, at Hawthorns Golf and Country Club and Prairie View Golf Club, in Fishers and Carmel, Indiana.

The four-day, 72-hole championships are co-hosted by Anderson University and the Hamilton County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

One hundred eighty players will compete as 24 conferences were awarded automatic bids and eight more were selected from Pool B (consisting of independent institutions and those that are members of conferences that don’t meet requirements for automatic qualification). The final three berths were reserved for Pool C, which are institutions from automatic-qualifying conferences that are not the conference champion and any remaining Pool B teams.

Five individual players were selected from those who did not qualify with a team.

Sophomore Mike DeRuntz (Western Springs, Ill., Lyons Township HS) and senior Ryan Gumbel (Champaign, Mahomet-Seymour HS) were the top IWU finishers in the CCIW tourney, finishing sixth and seventh, respectively.
Gumbel has a season stroke average of 76.5 through 15 rounds and DeRuntz is at 77.1. The team leader is sophomore Michael Hasselbring (Bloomington, Tri-Valley HS), who has a 76.0 average in 10 rounds with two top five finishes.

IWU’s Dan Stoerzbach played as an individual in the 1978, 1979 and 1980 NCAA Division III championships. He earned All-America honors for his 11th place finish in 1979 and placed 33rd in 1978 and 36th in 1980.As a team, IWU competed frequently in the NAIA District 20 tournament and was in the NAIA national meet in 1967 but missed the 36-hole cut.

CONTACT: Stew Salowitz, 309-556-3206