Nicholls golf team will feature youngest squad ever with five freshmen

Going into the 2024 spring season, veteran Nicholls golf coach James Schilling has a bit better idea what is needed from his extremely young squad.

There is a lot to be done, but at least he has an inkling of just what that task might look like. It’s a contrast from back in the fall when Schilling had no idea what to expect from a team that featured five freshmen, one sophomore, two juniors (one being a newcomer as a transfer), and a now-departed senior.

“I didn’t know what to expect with that many freshmen,” said Schilling, who is in his 26th season as the coach of the Colonels. “The key to playing Division I golf is you have to be able to hold your rounds together and string them all together in sequence.

“I felt as the season progressed, we did it in longer spurts. You saw that with the play from the freshmen. It wasn’t long enough for us to really be competitive in the tournaments, everyone knows that.”

The departed senior means Nicholls will be even younger than in the fall.

“Basically what we’re doing with the team is instead of hitting the transfer portal and stuff like that, we’re trying to build it for the future,” Schilling said. “The previous year we had two first-team All-Southland guys and that’s kind of how we did it, which was by taking our lumps several years ago.”

The latest young group took some lumps in the fall, but came away a bit wiser, according to Schilling

“The players have told me that they’re more ready and prepared in that they know what to expect and they understand how good the players are,” the Nicholls coach said. “I don’t think they really had a full understanding of just how competitive this is. You never do. I know I didn’t coming from high school and then going to my freshman year, there was a learning curve at least a semester for me.”

The fact that we’re putting in the work, we discussed, all of us, that we’re not where we want to be as a team, but we’re going to keep working towards improvement.

Following a break after the fall season, the Colonels, Schilling said, are eager to compete.

“Every player mentioned that we’re excited to be back at Nicholls. We like it here at Nicholls. We enjoy it here,” said Schilling. “We enjoy what we have as far as teammates and the setup that we have for practice and getting better.

“That means a lot. The fact that you have players that are planning to look at being here longer term versus just using it a stop back gap and going somewhere else. I think that bodes well for the team.”

Two of the freshmen ready to go are Canadians Chase Pochylko and Jack Moro.

“I was very pleased with Chase throughout the semester. I know he wasn’t really where he wants to be stroke-average wise, but I thought, away from home for the first time, playing the schedule that we play (he handled it well). “I think Jack was fairly consistent. He didn’t play in every tournament, but he seemed to kind of grasp the level of concentration that you need, especially on the 36-hole days because it’s long days.”

Among those where it is still a wait-and-see scenario, Schilling said, is sophomore Zach Morvant.

“Morvant had some spots there where, especially at LaTour (Golf Club in Mathews), he made a lot of birdies, which is kind of different for him from semesters past,” said Schilling. “Again, you have to be able to put the whole round together. You can’t have large numbers. You’ve got to keep black numbers off the scorecard.

“He’s kind of proven that he can have some firepower that are going to come back, but still just a sophomore.”

Diego Prat Cruza is one of two juniors, but even he is a newcomer for the Colonels as a transfer.

 “He got he got into the lineup a little bit later and he’s a junior college guy,” Schilling said of Cruza. “Everyone, Tommy Danielson, all the players are kind of lumped in together. If you look at the scores and just basically who played and who didn’t play. Dylan (Weber), Tommy (Danielson), Peyton Canter hasn’t played yet. He’s from St. Amant. He’ll probably will play this semester. Colin Jones, also from Lake Charles, he played some for us as well.”

For those who are counting, it adds up to a squad of eight golfers.

“They’re going to have to be ready to go because six of the eight are new here,” Schilling said. “The only two that we have that are familiar with the lay of the land and maybe even some of the tournaments are Cantor and Morvant.”

“You can build your team different ways. We’re just going to really try to go with these young guys and give them a chance, see how they do for these five tournaments, and then we’ll sit down at the end of the of the semester and kind of evaluate. They’re going to have a chance to play, much more so than other places. This is kind of a unique situation.”

Improvement from the fall to the spring, Schilling said, can be achieved with more consistency from his squad.

“I felt sometimes we didn’t get off to a good enough start in our tournaments and we’ve talked about that a lot,” said Schilling. “Some of that is age, some of that is maturity, but just being ready to go out of the gate versus always digging yourself out of a hole and putting pressure on yourself to try to either hold a round together because you had a bad start, or three of your five guys are already kind of struggling and out of it. It can really snowball quickly with the way that the scoring works for team golf.