DU nixes intercollegiate fall golf, meaning no Colorado Division I college golf programs will be competing again in tournaments as a team before 2021
By Gary Baines – 8/20/2020
It’s now a clean sweep.
University of Denver officials said this week that its men’s and women’s golf teams won’t be competing in any intercollegiate tournaments in the fall, meaning that none of the nine Colorado-based NCAA Division I golf programs will tee it up team-wise for the remainder of 2020 due to Covid-19-related concerns.
The Mountain West Conference (Colorado State men and women and the Air Force Academy men), the Pac-12 (University of Colorado men and women) and the Big Sky (University of Northern Colorado men and women) had previously nixed intercollegiate golf — and other sports — for the fall. And DU followed suit this week.
Typically, all the Colorado-based Division I golf tournaments are scheduled for the fall season. Last year, for instance, there were nine such events held in Colorado in either September or October.
College golf teams compete in both the fall and the spring, with conference, regional and national championships decided in the spring. Typically, Colorado-based Division I programs play fall tournaments in September, October and, in some cases, early November.
Despite all the recent announcements, it’s expected that some local individual Division I college players will compete unattached this fall in tournaments that are being held.
In the case of DU, the lack of a fall season will mean that the men’s team won’t make its official debut under new head coach Trake Carpenter until 2021. And coach Lindsay Kuhle’s DU women, typically ranked among the top 50 women’s golf teams in the country, won’t be able to show their stuff this season until after the new year.
DU’s men’s team features several Coloradans —senior Jackson Solem, junior Cal McCoy, sophomore Connor Jones and freshman Ryder Heuston. On the women’s side, there’s fifth-year senior Mary Weinstein and sophomore Caroline Jordaan. Italian Anna Zanusso, a sophomore, is currently No. 61 in the women’s World Amateur Golf Rankings.
DU also won’t have fall intercollegiate competition for its tennis, soccer and volleyball programs.
As for Colorado-based NCAA Division II programs, the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference announced two weeks ago that men’s and women’s golf teams could compete intercollegiately in the fall.