On Sunday, Gilkison, a 2021 Springboro High School graduate, will play a practice round with his teammates at Poplar Grove Golf Club as they prepare to play in the Amherst, Virginia Regional Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday for a spot in the NCAA Championship.
The Golden Flashes, who qualified for the regional by winning the Mid-American Conference last month, are seeded 11th in a 13-team field that includes college golf powerhouses LSU, Oklahoma, Vanderbilt and Pepperdine.
The top five teams out of each of the six regionals held at various sites qualify for the NCAA Championship May 23-28 at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, Calif.
Gilkison, medalist at the MAC tourney and conference golfer of the year, believes if Kent State performs up to its potential, it can “definitely” finish in the top five.
After two rounds of the 54-hole MAC tournament at Pinnacle Golf Club in Grove City, it appeared the Golden Flashes wouldn’t advance. Kent State was three shots behind Eastern Michigan heading into the final round.
The weather was ideal the first two rounds, Gilkison said. But on the last round, it was rainy and windy, perfect weather for a comeback, he said.
“We were used to those conditions,” Gilkison said. “We were more prepared.”
While Kent State’s four golfers shot 290 the final round, Eastern Michigan shot 311 and dropped from first to third. Ball State was second, 16 shots behind Kent State.
Kent State shot a 54-hole total of 854, 10-under-par to secure the program’s 29th MAC title.
This will be Gilkison’s second trip to the regional. Kent State won the MAC and earned an automatic bid when he was a freshman, and his brother, Josh, was a fifth-year senior.
Kent State finished 11th that year in the regional and freshman Gilkison tied for 40th.
“I felt a lot of pressure because I wanted to perform for them,” he said of the upperclassmen.
Now he finds himself a senior.
“We’re not done yet,” Gilkison said. “We want to keep our season going.”
Gilkison is playing the best golf of his college career after a stellar career at Springboro where he won the 2020 Division I state championship.
He didn’t play as well as he hoped in tournaments last summer, but since then he has “matured mentally,” he said. He has tried to put golf scores in perspective.
“That has given me more freedom to play better golf,” he said.
He won the University of Dayton Flyer Classic at NCR Country Club in the fall and won the Buckeye Classic and MAC championship this spring. Those are his three college victories.
Wright State’s team, Dayton individual qualify for regional
Gilkison and his KSU teammates will be joined at the regionals by the Wright State University team and University of Dayton’s Ben Cors, who qualified as an individual.
He’s the third Flyer to win the A-10 title and the first since Henry May in 2021, said Flyer coach Gip Hoagland, in his 16th season.
He said Cors, from Walsh Jesuit High School, finished strong to win the A-10 title. He had two birdies and an eagle on three consecutive holes on the back nine.
“He was in some sort of zone,” Hoagland said.
He finished at 11 under, five strokes ahead of the second-place finisher, highlighted by a career-low 66 in the second round.
So instead of coaching a five-man team as he does at other tournaments, it will be just Cors and Hoagland at the regional.
That will give Hoagland more time to coach Cors if needed.
“There may be times when he calls me over and other times when he says, ‘I got this,’” Hoagland said. “It will be a lot of fun.”
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