By Colton Pankiewicz, Assistant Sports Editor
In the second to last outing of the season for Canisius, the team teed off in a shotgun style tournament that resulted in their best finish of the year.
Prior to last weekend, the Griffs hadn’t outshot more than two teams in any of their tournaments this season. In the Coca-Cola invitational they finished above five schools on the leaderboard
Senior Shane Broad landed a fifth place finish after he broke his career-low for a two round tournament finishing with a 70 (-2), and a 72 (E), as teammate Ryan Edholm’s 75 (+3), and 70 (-2) notched him into 15th place.
Much of the team's success came from their two most consistent golfers, who each posted a two-under-par score on opposite days of the tournament.
Broad and Edholm kicked off their first day at Northampton Country Club on the fourth tee box, staring down a 226 yard par three. Broad bogeyed that fourth hole as well as the sixth hole before picking up two birdies, as well as an eagle on the 11th hole that lowered his score to two-under-par to finish the day.
The senior’s eagle was just one of two eagle’s in the entire tournament scored on the 491 yard par 5.
Broad elaborated on his performance, saying “On the 11th hole I gained confidence down wind from 219 yards out, and hit a soft four iron to eight feet and made my eagle putt, then parred every hole after that until 18, which’s a shorter par four. There, I drained a putt off the fringe for birdie to finish the first day two under."
Edholm’s first day wasn’t as bright as his teammate's, finishing with three bogeys to end his first round three-over-par. The sophomore lit up the track in his second round though, posting five birdies that contributed to his round total of 70.
His most notable birdie came on the course’s hardest ranked hole, a 586 yard par five. Edholm’s stellar second round was enough for him to jump 36 spots, from 51st place to 15th place, marking the third largest jump in the tournament as he finished with a two round total of 145.
"I played well to start the first day honestly and then burned some edges, putts weren’t falling and it led to some bogeys, and I scraped away with a 75" sophomore Ryan Edholm said. "The second day the conditions were definitely harder, wind was up, pins were tucked, but the putts just fell that second day."
Broad also finished his second round with five birdies, but canceled them out with five bogeys, marking him even-par on the second day, thus allowing him to move from eighth to fifth, finishing with 142 as his two round total.
No other Griff was able to surpass 50th place as a team Canisius finished with a two round total of 598 strokes, finishing 28 strokes behind Lehigh University as they took home the trophy at the Coca-Cola Invitational.
Canisius travels to Lake Buena Vista, Florida next, for the MAAC Championship, a three day tournament to close out their season.
In the tournament last year, the Griffs finished in seventh after three Griffs posted top 20 finishes including Shane Broad who closed out the tournament in fifth place, and Ben Ramold who finished in 20th.
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