Men’s Golf Fin­ishes Un­ortho­dox Fall Sea­son

MISHAWAKA--Like many sports teams across the coun­try, the Bethel Men’s Golf team faced a se­ries of chal­lenges due to COVID-19. Three of the team’s golfers tested pos­i­tive for COVID-19 in the mid­dle of their sea­son, which pre­vented them from play­ing in two of their sched­uled tour­na­ments. 

“We got to go out and play one time over those two weeks [of quar­an­tine],” Se­nior Luke Hil­le­gonds said. “And…we only got to do that. It was kind of dif­fi­cult be­cause we had a tour­na­ment com­ing up the next week once we got out.” 

As a re­sult, the men’s golf team only played in two tour­na­ments this fall: the Har­bor Shores In­ter­col­le­giate and the NC­CAA North Cen­tral Re­gion Cham­pi­onship.  

Only five play­ers from the Bethel golf team can of­fi­cially com­pete in tour­na­ments. When the three quar­an­tined Bethel golfers were cleared to re­turn to prac­tice, they played a game of golf against their team­mates for one of the five spots. 

Se­nior Reilly Troyer said re­turn­ing from quar­an­tine and com­pet­ing against his team­mates was dif­fi­cult. The skill level of each Bethel golfer is so close that the team did not have an ex­clu­sive, stand­out five guys who were guar­an­teed to play in every tour­na­ment. 

In ad­di­tion to the dis­rup­tion of quar­an­tine, the men’s golf team also gained a new head coach prior to the fall sea­son’s start. 

In April, then-Head Coach Adam Sharp told the team he was step­ping away from the po­si­tion af­ter four years. Sharp be­came the as­sis­tant coach of men’s golf in or­der to de­vote more time to his full-time po­si­tion at St. Mark Mis­sion­ary Church in Mishawaka, IN. 

“I think we were just re­ally good friends with Coach Sharp, so it was kind of we weren’t re­ally sure what to ex­pect go­ing in, what kind of re­la­tion­ship we’d have with the new coach,” Ju­nior KJ Haverdink said. 

On April 27, the Bethel Uni­ver­sity Ath­letic De­part­ment an­nounced John Fis­cher as the new head coach. Fis­cher has been a Pro­fes­sional Golfers As­so­ci­a­tion (PGA) teach­ing pro­fes­sional for over 35 years. He also con­tin­ues to serve as the Di­rec­tor of the Lifestyle Ju­nior Golf Tour, a po­si­tion he has held since 2010. 

“We have 405 kids from North­ern In­di­ana on our tour,” Fis­cher said. “That tour started 10 years ago when I took it over and had 30 kids and 3 girls. Now, ten years later, we have 405 ju­niors from col­le­giate down to eight years old play­ing our tour.” 

Fis­cher said he re­ceived a nice wel­come from the Bethel com­mu­nity when he came into the job. 

Some of the pri­mary changes Fis­cher has brought to the men’s golf pro­gram are get­ting his play­ers on a low-carb diet and a three-days-a-week in­tense train­ing pro­gram. The diet re­quires the ath­letes to con­sume less sugar, less carbs and drink­ing more wa­ter in or­der to main­tain a health­ier fit­ness level. Fis­cher said the train­ing pro­gram, which in­volves weightlift­ing and car­dio, will in­crease his play­ers’ strength and sta­mina for the game of golf. 

The team did not qual­ify for the Na­tional Chris­t­ian Col­lege Ath­letic As­so­ci­a­tion (NC­CAA) Na­tional Cham­pi­onship like they had hoped. Their next goal is to come­back this spring to win the Cross­roads League tour­na­ment. 

“We have the tal­ented play­ers cur­rently here at Bethel,” Fis­cher said. “Bring­ing in a cou­ple new re­cruits for next fall will help tremen­dously when we lose two or three se­niors, but…again, it’s go­ing to be about dis­ci­pline.”