A group of “old guys” carried the Hawaii Hilo men’s golf team to the program’s fourth conference championship.
Led by a pair of individual co-champions, the Vulcans shot 15-over 879 as a team over three days at the Pacific West Conference Championships at Wigwam Golf Course in Litchfield Park, Ariz., capped by a 300 on Wednesday to finish 10 shots clear of runner-up Dominican.
It was the team’s first tournament victory of the season and the program's first PacWest title since 2014. With the win, the Vulcans qualified for the NCAA West Regional at Foxtail Golf Club in Rohnert Park, Calif., on May 11 to 13.
“This whole week we kept telling them to settle their minds,” assistant coach Sean Maekawa told UHH Athletics. “It’s easy to think about what could’ve been different on the previous holes, and you always know what’s coming up at the finishing holes. So we just wanted them to stay in the moment, be present and take it one shot at a time.”
Hilo had four of its five competing team members place in the top nine, with Junsu Im and Andrew Otani sharing the individual championship by shooting 1-over 217s.
Keith Ng shot 7-over 223 for a tie for fifth, Dustin Franko was 9-over 225 for ninth and Nicholas Gomez was 19-over 235 for 20th.
Im is a freshman from British Columbia. The other four are seniors.
“Being a team of four old guys, four seniors, I think the experience really came in handy,” Otani told UHH Athletics. “This week really validated that.”
Otani and Im became the fourth and fifth PacWest individual champions in program history after Zady Ari (2008), Logan Goulding (2009) and Blake Snyder (2011). The fifth-year senior Otani, an Iolani School graduate, came close in the past with a fourth-place finish as a true freshman in 2019 and third place in 2022.
Hawaii Pacific finished fifth with a 79-over 943, and Chaminade was last among the six teams at 96-over 960.
Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.
